Exim painfully slow after system update

Kal

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I just did a dnf upgrade which was slightly overdue, and updated heaps of random stuff. I rebooted the server and everything seemed fine… except for exim. It was running like a sloth through molasses. Test messages would seem to never leave my mail client. I'd randomly get some connection errors too. Nothing wrong according to the exim logs, and eventually (maybe 20 minutes later) the messages started trickling through… slowly. I tried restarting exim, but that too took a small eternity.

In the end, I rebuilt exim using custombuild, and everything magically righted itself. So I'm sharing this because (1) it may help someone else, and (2) I'm curious whether this is a known thing. I did heaps of yum -y updates on my old server over the years, and exim never choked on any of them to my knowledge. Any thoughts on what might have caused this? After updating packages, do you have a ritual for ironing these kinds of gremlins out of the system?
 
Well if think about the difference between binary and compiled. In general, yum is “go get a bunch of already compiled applications and install them”. When you do that the point in time compiled (da applications ) are still maybe not "updated enough". You might need to recompile the system or apps where the prerequisite (preinstall) binary has changed. Since the point in time compiled ones won’t know they are “really changed”

I run
Code:
./build all
regularity after yum changes. To keep the applications all updated. I find I don’t have to do it all the time. Like you said but sometimes things seem out of sync so I do.
 
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Thanks Brent. That makes perfect sense. Sounds like a good habit to get into!
 
Thanks Brent. That makes perfect sense. Sounds like a good habit to get into!
Well, I am in the "Update the System" category. So some might say why did you even update? Also, some would say just update the 1 item that is not working which is fine too. Which is what you did and it helped. I take it a step further and wonder if Dovecot or apache might be next. So the regular guy in me says "Heck" just do it all.. I mean it is just 1 and 0 s... ommv
 
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Update: This continues to happen to me after doing a `dnf upgrade`. The last two times I finished with a `./build all`, but it still choked. After that I rebuilt just exim, and that fixed it:

Code:
cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
./build update
./build exim
./build exim_conf

Frustrating that this keeps happening.
 
Like others, I decided I've had enough of Exim 4.94 and it's endless issues. See these other related threads:
It seems the only reliable solution posted so far is to revert Exim back to version 4.93.0.4. Here are all the instructions, gathered in one place:

Downgrade Exim and associated files in CustomBuild 2.0 (See: help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=565&in1=exim&in2=4.93.0.4&in3=):

In DirectAdmin:
1. Go to Extra Features > Custom Build 2.0 > Customize Versions.
2. Set 'exim' version to 4.93.0.4
3. Set 'exim_conf_45' version to 4.5.23
4. Set 'exim_dkim_conf' version to 1.5

Confirm version overrides:
Code:
cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
cat custom_versions.txt
exim:4.93.0.4:
exim_conf_45:4.5.23:
exim_dkim_conf:1.5:

Code:
./build update
./build exim
./build exim_conf

Manually revert exim.dkim.conf:
Code:
wget -O /etc/exim.dkim.conf http://files.directadmin.com/services/exim.dkim.conf.1.5

Confirm that versions have reverted to exim 4.93.0.4, exim.conf 4.5.23 and exim.dkim.conf 1.5:
Code:
exim -bV
cat /etc/exim.conf
cat /etc/exim.dkim.conf
 
Last edited:
Like others, I decided I've had enough of Exim 4.94 and it's endless issues. See these other related threads:
It seems the only reliable solution posted so far is to revert Exim back to version 4.93.0.4. Here are all the instructions, gathered in one place:

Downgrade Exim and associated files in CustomBuild 2.0 (See: help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=565&in1=exim&in2=4.93.0.4&in3=):

In DirectAdmin:
1. Go to Extra Features > Custom Build 2.0 > Customize Versions.
2. Set 'exim' version to 4.93.0.4
3. Set 'exim_conf_45' version to 4.5.23
4. Set 'exim_dkim_conf' version to 1.5

Confirm version overrides:
Code:
cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
cat custom_versions.txt
exim:4.93.0.4:
exim_conf_45:4.5.23:
exim_dkim_conf:1.5:

Code:
./build update
./build exim
./build exim_conf

Manually revert exim.dkim.conf:
Code:
wget -O /etc/exim.dkim.conf http://files.directadmin.com/services/exim.dkim.conf.1.5

Confirm that versions have reverted to exim 4.93.0.4, exim.conf 4.5.23 and exim.dkim.conf 1.5:
Code:
exim -bV
cat /etc/exim.conf
cat /etc/exim.dkim.conf
Good job with the guide Kal. I hope you are well.

I wonder has anyone gone over and reported the issues to the Exim team? Must be bigger than DA because I dont have issues at least none that are apparent to me. Also seems the common thread is CentOS too. If you have support did you ask DA to login and check?

Is it super fast now? btw?
 
Thanks Brent. Yes, I'm well, and so is the mail server now. :)

Yes, I think it's bigger than DA, because there are similar discussions about 4.94 on the Vesta Control Panel forums. Someone there said they reported on Bugzilla, back on 18 June 2020. That Exim 4.94 hasn't been updated since 1 Jun 2020 doesn't speak highly of their current development team I have to say. Their home page says, 'All versions of Exim previous to version 4.94 are now obsolete'. Did you ever hear such a misplaced confidence in a version release?! 🤦‍♂️

I have not logged a ticket with DA. I'm happy to do that if Martynas thinks it would be helpful. @smtalk
 
Someone there said they reported on Bugzilla, back on 18 June 2020.
What's the URL to the bug report?

That forum thread is about misconfiguration issue (at least the initial post, totally unrelated).
 
Do you mean you get any “tainted” log entries in exim mainlog? Misconfiguration may come from custom config there.
That's not my bug report. As I said before, it's from one of the users on the Vesta Control Panel forum. I haven't reported my issues to the Exim devs. Not sure if any other DA users have.
 
That's not my bug report. As I said before, it's from one of the users on the Vesta Control Panel forum. I haven't reported my issues to the Exim devs. Not sure if any other DA users have.
Yes, but as I said - default DA config and exim 4.94 does not produce any “tainted” errors in exim mainlog, so, this report has nothing to do with DA.

Are you running default configuration there?
 
@Kal maybe you should upgrade back to latest. Then log an issue so smtalk can see the issue.

Sounds like everyone has said I have an issue but not logged an official support request.

Maybe if they really look at it. They will be able to tell everyone what’s going on.

also I was asking if you had logged a bug request to the exim team not redhat. They alway obsolete the old version it’s how they do there releases
 
Yes, but as I said - default DA config and exim 4.94 does not produce any “tainted” errors in exim mainlog, so, this report has nothing to do with DA.
Haha we're going around in circles here. I did wonder why you asked for the URL of the bug report if that forum thread wasn't relevant. I just thought you must have your reasons.

Just to clarify my intention here, it was really just to help others by sharing the steps to revert back to the previous version of Exim. Since then I've just been answering any questions asked of me. :)

@Kal maybe you should upgrade back to latest. Then log an issue so smtalk can see the issue.
Call me selfish, but I don't want to be the guinea pig on my commercial server. I've wasted way too much time on this already, and my clients have endured enough. We just experienced the issue some others have described, where the same incoming messages keep being sent, over and over and over again.
 
Are you running default configuration there?
I have made some minor email-related changes…
  1. Secure Exim (SMTP) by enforcing SSL/TLS for authentication (See: https://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=653)
  2. Customise ESF spam message (See: https://feedback.directadmin.com/b/feature-requests/change-esf-spam-message/)
  3. Customise ESF thresholds (See: https://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=663)
  4. Switched from SpamAssassin to Rspamd.
I don't imagine any of these things are the problem. Steps 1 and 2 don't even stick after updates unfortunately.

You're welcome to log into my server and look for anything else unusual if you think it might help, but as I said to Brent, I don't want to go back to Exim 4.94 in order to try and trigger the bugs again.
 
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