I've spent the past several hours searching for solutions to my problem, and I've seen some threads that approach an accurate description of the problem, but I wasn't able to find a solution. So, I hope I can describe this problem adequately to receive some attention on this forum.
In brief, the problem is that over time, exim processes increase and drive my server load higher and higher. (e.g., I woke up this morning and found the load to be over 80 and I was barely able to get in to reboot the server.) Usually, if I catch this before it gets too high, I can simply restart exim and the load drops back down to under 1 or maybe 2 -- certainly an acceptible level.
The load will usually remain low for around an hour, at which time, I assume exim starts it queue run (it's set to 60 minutes in WHM currently).
One other factor which leads me to the conclusion that processing the queue is a major contributing factor is that this problem gets worse as the size of the queue grows, whic it does at a faster rate once the load begins to rise.
I'm basically asking what can be done to solve this problem. Are there settings I can implement in the exim configuration which will encourage exim to process mail when it is delivered rather than queueing it? When it is necessary to queue mail, is it possible to keep queue runs from driving the load too high without letting the size of the queue grow to an unmanageable size?
In case it matters, I'm running Fedora 3 with the latest kernel updates on a Dual Pentium D 3.0GHz with 1GB RAM. If the mail stats in WHM can be believed, I process around 1000 messages an hour during peak times. Let me know if there's any other info you need.
In brief, the problem is that over time, exim processes increase and drive my server load higher and higher. (e.g., I woke up this morning and found the load to be over 80 and I was barely able to get in to reboot the server.) Usually, if I catch this before it gets too high, I can simply restart exim and the load drops back down to under 1 or maybe 2 -- certainly an acceptible level.
The load will usually remain low for around an hour, at which time, I assume exim starts it queue run (it's set to 60 minutes in WHM currently).
One other factor which leads me to the conclusion that processing the queue is a major contributing factor is that this problem gets worse as the size of the queue grows, whic it does at a faster rate once the load begins to rise.
I'm basically asking what can be done to solve this problem. Are there settings I can implement in the exim configuration which will encourage exim to process mail when it is delivered rather than queueing it? When it is necessary to queue mail, is it possible to keep queue runs from driving the load too high without letting the size of the queue grow to an unmanageable size?
In case it matters, I'm running Fedora 3 with the latest kernel updates on a Dual Pentium D 3.0GHz with 1GB RAM. If the mail stats in WHM can be believed, I process around 1000 messages an hour during peak times. Let me know if there's any other info you need.