Exim error

DRKT

Verified User
Joined
Oct 8, 2003
Messages
217
Hi!

i have this error for more clients. (exim 4.66 + spamassassin 3.1.7)

--------------
Objet*: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

[email protected]
local delivery failed

The following text was generated during the delivery attempt:

------ [email protected] ------

An error was detected while processing a file of BSMTP input.
The error message was:

421 SMTP incoming data timeout - message abandoned

The SMTP transaction started in line 0.
The error was detected in line 3.
0 previous messages were successfully processed.
The rest of the batch was abandoned.
421 SMTP incoming data timeout - message abandoned Transaction started in line 0 Error detected in line 3
--------------

for resolve temporary this problem:

killall -9 spamd
killall -9 spamc
/etc/init.d/spamd

...restart exim
_____________

but i do each day... it's not normal.. :(

How to resolve this problem?

thanks!
 
Last edited:
You may be overloading your server with the amount of email you're sending through SpamAssassin.

I suggest you comment out the SpamAssassin director from eixm.conf.

Look for these lines:
Code:
# Spam Assassin
spamcheck_director:
 driver = accept
 condition = "${if and { \
		{!def:h_X-Spam-Flag:} \
			{!>={$message_size}{80k}} \
		{!eq {$received_protocol}{spam-scanned}} \
		{!eq {$received_protocol}{local}} \
		{exists{/home/${lookup{$domain}lsearch{/etc/virtual/domainowners}{$value}}/.spamassassin/user_prefs}} \
	} {1}{0}}"
 retry_use_local_part
 transport = spamcheck
 no_verify
and comment out all the lines that aren't already commented out. Then restart exim.

This will turn off SpamAssassin. If everything works, then your email load is overloading SpamAssassin on your server.

Jeff
 
I'm having the same problem and I don't believe it has anything to do with overloading exim/spamc. The server is one of our most recent servers and it only has 1/3 of max users.

Check what top says:
PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND

88566 root 1 104 0 25328K 24500K RUN 0 1:54 79.82% perl
#ps aux|grep spam
web26202 88566 85.6 0.7 25328 24500 ?? R< 10:43AM 3:17.91 spamd child (perl)
root 88564 0.0 0.6 22980 22240 ?? Ss 10:43AM 0:00.54 /usr/bin/spamd -d -c -m 5 -r /var/run/spamd.pid (perl)
root 88567 0.0 0.7 24924 24068 ?? I 10:43AM 0:00.44 spamd child (perl)
mail 88611 0.0 0.1 3044 2356 ?? I 10:43AM 0:00.00 /usr/sbin/exim -oMr spam-scanned -bS
mail 88613 0.0 0.0 1800 676 ?? I< 10:43AM 0:00.00 /usr/bin/spamc -u web26202
root 88721 0.0 0.6 22980 22240 ?? I 10:45AM 0:00.00 spamd child (perl)
root 88792 0.0 0.0 1524 596 p1 R+ 10:47AM 0:00.00 grep spam
Then it times out after a while, returning the message:
An error was detected while processing a file of BSMTP input.
The error message was:

421 Lost incoming connection

The SMTP transaction started in line 0.
The error was detected in line 3.
0 previous messages were successfully processed.
The rest of the batch was abandoned.
421 Lost incoming connection
Transaction started in line 0
Error detected in line 3
.
I have reinstalled spamd and restarted exim/spamd. Sometimes mail gets through directly and sometimes it "hangs" with spamd using every CPU resources.
Disabling SpamAssassin solves the problem but isn't really a solution.

I really need your help,
Thanks
 
Last edited:
Just started errors 3 days ago: 421 SMTP incoming data timeout

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one...but what works to solve this?
I just started getting "421 SMTP incoming data timeout" three days ago.

Every morning several clients experience this.
I restart Exim and it appears to start working again.
The amount of spam getting through is quite high too.
 
Hi

no, I remove spamassin of Exim temporarily. I did not find a solution.
 
with nothing... it is a server with few customers. But if you found the solution, contact me!
 
we are suffering the same problem. We partially fix it with:

- /usr/bin/spamd -d -c -m 10 (10 and not 5, process)
- limiting to 100K the size to analize emails
- limiting more exim (max concurrents connections by each IP, etc)

We didn´t find where to setup the queue of emails that are waiting to be analized by SpamAssassin... we read that is a rule and has a fixed max Q of emails in it. If you overpass, then that error you tell.
 
We solve the problem by running all (or most) domains through SpamBlocker first; that blocks somewhere over 80% of all incoming email at delivery; SpamAssassin is a lot more effecient with that much less email ;) .

Jeff
 
I have this error regularly since a few weeks but I have not really found any information.
The link with SpamAssassin seems true but what's the real solution ?
Have you found a good solution since 2007? :confused:
 
In the two years this thread remained inactive spam load has increased by many factors. I strongly suggest not running SpamAssassin unless you also run SpamBlocker for all domains; with today's load only the fastest servers (quad-core, many gigs of memory) stand a chance of running SpamAssassin fast enough to keep up with the load.

That's my opinion :).

Jeff
 
That is Yes one option.
I discovered my problem - I have VPS and some others VPS nodes in same server ware under DDOS attack. As in this situation - CPU is shared - in this reason my loads go also up (5-20), and then SA rejects the messages.

So we need some solution. Right now I add to exim.conf:
timeout_defer = true
transport_filter_timeout = 5m

I don't know - is it enough or not for next time.

SpamBlock is good - but it is able to drop back only (estimated figures) 90% - other 7% takes SA and 3% is spam what its getting trough.

Or is it SpamBlock 3 much better?
 
Or is it SpamBlock 3 much better?
Yes. But that's good too, and since NoBaloney SpamBlocker Technology* blocks so much before the rest gets to SpamAssassin, it makes the load on the server much less as well.

Jeff
*NoBaloney SpamBlocker Technology is a trademark of NoBaloney Internet Services.
 
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