60,114 messages in exim queue!!

[gordita]

What could cause this? About three weeks ago I was a happy camper with 2-3 messages but this is just crazy and it's killing my server load.

I've run /scripts/exim4

I just tried setting this in exim.conf:

ignore_bounce_errors_after = 2m
timeout_frozen_after = 2m

... and then restarting (ala /etc/rc.d/init.d/exim restart) and they just keep building and building.

Can anyone throw out some suggestions?!

[roliboli]

First check why the messages in the queue are. So go to the whm and manually send a message.
Then you can see the failure.
On our servers there are a lot of *scr or *.pif which are blocked by exim.

So you can then delete the whole queue in whm.

[gordita]

Okay, I figured out what was goign on here.

This:
deliver_queue_load_max = 3

Needed to be increased because my average load is higher than that. Since my load was higher the queue would never run itself

deliver_queue_load_max = 9

[nickn]

One would think the actual solution of this would be to stop overloading your server

[cpanelben]

There's a lot of variety in what the load average means. I've seen SMP systems that happily chug along with a load average of 15-18. It just depends upon the system.

[Valetia]

Is it possible to set deliver_queue_load_max in one of the boxes found in WHM's advanced exim config editor so that it won't be overwritten by Cpanel?

Currently I see deliver_queue_load_max listed within the exim.conf file but it isn't editable from the WHM editor.

If I place it in one of the boxes does it automatically override the "hard-coded" version? If so, does it matter which box I use?

[cpanelben]

No, I suppose it is not possible through the editor.

You can just edit the exim.conf file from a terminal. It should only be overwritten if exim is reinstalled/reset/upgraded. Just keep a copy of your modified configuration file to replace the fresh one anytime the aforementioned situations occur.

[Martin]

Originally posted by snickn
One would think the actual solution of this would be to stop overloading your server

I think it is quite safe to increase it beyond the default of 3. I have increased it to 10 happily on old machines and still happily had a load average below 1 at peak times, clearly it depends on how much overall load not just email and the hardware spec.

gordita, I assume you have a high spec box, but just incase, it should be noted that you could possibly crash your machine by letting exim process more mail than it can handle.