From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jan 21 02:30:04 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 85E5016A400 for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2007 02:30:04 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rich@pencil.math.missouri.edu) Received: from pencil.math.missouri.edu (pencil.math.missouri.edu [128.206.49.147]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4281013C45E for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2007 02:30:04 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rich@pencil.math.missouri.edu) Received: from pencil.math.missouri.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pencil.math.missouri.edu (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id l0L1u8cT050865 for ; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:56:08 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from rich@pencil.math.missouri.edu) Received: (from rich@localhost) by pencil.math.missouri.edu (8.13.6/8.13.6/Submit) id l0L1u8JA050864 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:56:08 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from rich) From: Rich Winkel Message-Id: <200701210156.l0L1u8JA050864@pencil.math.missouri.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:56:08 -0600 (CST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL122i (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.1 required=5.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, SPF_HELO_PASS,SPF_PASS autolearn=ham version=3.1.3 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on pencil.math.missouri.edu X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.88.3/2473/Sat Jan 20 15:12:15 2007 on pencil.math.missouri.edu X-Virus-Status: Clean Subject: Mail server intermittent freeze X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2007 02:30:04 -0000 I'm pulling out what's left of my hair trying to figure out this one. It's not a pretty sight. Save the people who have to look at me! It's a 1ghz intel P3 with 512MB ram, running 4.11-p26 with sendmail, imapd-uw, qpopper, stunnel-4.14_2 and p5-Mail-SpamAssassin-3.1.1, as well as tty logins. It's an nis and nfs client (nfs=home dirs). It has an fxp network card which is in polling mode (although the problem started before it was put in polling mode) The system will freeze maybe every 5 minutes, sometimes for up to a minute. Almost completely: low level terminal io on the console still works. I can switch tty's (ALT-Fn) and carriage returns are echoed (and discarded) while showing "netstat -w 1" output. But interactive prompts are frozen. No user-level processing is apparent. Network traffic is heavy, we're getting massive amounts of spam, and spamd's load on the system has jumped considerably in the past few weeks. Average system load used to hover around .8, now it averages over 2, mostly due to spamd. Large jumps in outgoing packet activity appear with "netstat -w 1" in the first update after recovery from the freeze. Usually an elevated rate just prior to it. My main concern is the discontinuity of the behavior. The response is not linear with respect to load, it just drops off a cliff, prior to which it seems normal. I'm thinking there's a logjam somewhere which could be alleviated. /etc/sysctl.conf contains net.inet.icmp.icmplim=100 kern.ipc.somaxconn=1024 net.inet.tcp.icmp_may_rst=0 net.inet.ip.redirect=0 net.inet.tcp.blackhole=1 net.inet.udp.blackhole=1 kern.polling.enable=1 Has anyone else seen this behavior?? Thanks for any help!! Rich