[cobalt-users] HELP!!! RaQ4 - Deferred messages / CPU overload / SMTP not responding

[ajongsma <andries.jongsma@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

First of all, sorry for the long subject but that coveres allmost all the
problems I'm having.

We have been running a RaQ2 for about 6 months and had major problems. The
CGI-scripts had a timeout with  the effect that admin-interface not to work
properly (0kb html's). This in combo with CPU overloads made us decide we
needed the fastest RaQ. We decided to get the RaQ 4r: 450Mhz AMD K6-2, 512KB
external L2 cache.


Problem 1. - Generating mailinglists
The making of a mailinglist caused major hassle. The names are unsorted so
every time the whole list has to be checked for a user. There was no function
which sorted the users.

Took some work but finally all domains, users and lists were generated by the
HTTP-interface. The RaQ was activated and started to process mail :D

Problem 2. - Messages are deferred
All the emails which are send to a mailinglist are deferred. The command
"sendmail -q" does a miracle and finally cleared all queued messages in
/var/spool/mqueue/q1 - q4. The only problem is that this is still happening.
How can this be solved?

Problem 3. - CPU Overload
I keep getting this message:
-----------------------------
Over the past fifteen minutes, the CPU has been heavily loaded.

This will result in noticible performace loss.  Consider moving some of the
services to other Cobalt servers, or reduce the complexity of the CGI
scripts running on the Cobalt server itself.

1 minute load average: 4.56
5 minute load average: 6.23
15 minute load average: 5.43
-----------------------------
Why does this keep happening and how can this be fixed?

Problem 4. - SMTP not responding
I keep getting this message:
-----------------------------
The SMTP (mail) server appears to be down.  The mail server may shut itself
down temporarily under extreme load, so you should also check the CPU load
on the server.  If the load does not appear to be the problem, try turning
mail service off and then on within the Cobalt server Control Panel to see if
this corrects the problem.  If not, try rebooting the server itself.  If this
still does not correct the problem, contact Cobalt Technical Support.
-----------------------------
Why o why???


I really hope you can help me so tolve this problem. I'm running out of ideas.
Please?!?


Regards,

Andries

NB:
Some stuff from the /var/log/dmesg:
Linux version 2.2.14C11 (root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) (gcc version 2.95.2 19991024
(release)) #2 Wed Jun 28 00:55:51 PDT 2000
Ignoring bogus EBDA pointer 1E5F000
Detected 448220420 Hz processor.
CPU: AMD AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor stepping 0c
ALI15X3: 100% native mode on irq 14
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA
hda: QUANTUM FIREBALLlct10 30, ATA DISK drive
hdc: QUANTUM FIREBALLlct10 30, ATA DISK drive
eth0: Invalid EEPROM checksum 0xaca2, check settings before activating this
device!
eth1: Invalid EEPROM checksum 0xaba2, check settings before activating this
device!