MIMEDEFANG-MULTIPLEXOR(8)MIMEDEFANG-MULTIPLEXOR(8)NAMEmimedefang-multiplexor - Process pool controller for mail filters.
SYNOPSISmimedefang-multiplexor [options]
DESCRIPTIONmimedefang-multiplexor manages a pool of Perl processes for scanning e-
mail. It is designed to work in conjunction with mimedefang(8) and
mimedefang.pl(8).
mimedefang-multiplexor opens a UNIX-domain socket and listens for
requests for work from mimedefang. As requests come in, mimedefang-
multiplexor creates Perl processes as needed to scan mail. The Perl
processes are not killed when scanning is completed, but continue to
run in a loop. Perl processes are re-used for subsequent e-mail mes‐
sages. This eliminates the large overhead of starting a new Perl
process for each incoming message.
To avoid memory leaks, the Perl processes are killed after they have
handled some number of scans.
OPTIONS-U user
Runs the multiplexor as user rather than root. This option is
mandatory, and must match the -U option supplied to mimedefang.
-m minSlaves
The minimum number of Perl processes to keep running at all
times. The default is zero.
-x maxSlaves
The maximum number of Perl processes to run simultaneously. If
a request comes in and all processes are busy, a temporary fail‐
ure is signalled to the SMTP peer. The default is 2.
-r maxRequests
The maximum number of requests a given process handles before it
is killed and a replacement started. The default is 500.
-i idleTime
The idle time in seconds after which to kill of excess Perl pro‐
cesses. That is, if the process is idle for longer than this
time, and there are more than minSlaves running, the process is
killed. Note that this is implemented as a timer which ticks
every idleTime seconds; therefore, processes may be idle for up
to twice this time before they are killed. The default for
idleTime is 300 seconds.
-b busyTime
The longest a Perl process is allowed to spend scanning an e-
mail before it is declared hung up and killed. The default is
120 seconds.
-Z This option specifies that the multiplexor should accept and
process "status updates" from busy slaves. Note that this con‐
sumes one extra file descriptor per slave, plus a small amount
of CPU time per status update.
-c cmdTime
The timeout for communication between mimedefang-multiplexor and
mimedefang, or between mimedefang-multiplexor and a Perl scan‐
ning process. The default is 10 seconds. This timeout should
be kept quite short.
-w waitTime
When mimedefang-multiplexor starts the initial slaves, or needs
to bring the number of running slaves up to the number defined
by the -m option, it does not start all the slaves at once,
because this could overload your server. Instead, it starts one
slave every waitTime seconds. The default value for waitTime is
3.
-W waitTime
If you use this option, mimedefang-multiplexor will never acti‐
vate a slave until waitTime seconds have elapsed since the last
slave activation. This could result in mail being tempfailed if
slave activations do not keep pace with incoming mail. However,
it may be preferable to tempfail mail rather than allow the load
on your server to spike up too quickly. The default value for
this option is 0, meaning that mimedefang-multiplexor will start
slaves as quickly as necessary to keep up with incoming mail.
-z spooldir
Set the spool directory to spooldir. If this option is omitted,
the spool directory defaults to /var/spool/MIMEDefang.
-s pathName
The UNIX-domain socket on which mimedefang-multiplexor listens
for requests. This should be specified as an absolute pathname.
If this option is not supplied, it defaults to mimedefang-multi‐
plexor.sock under the spool directory.
-a socket
A socket for listening for requests. This is similar to the -s
socket, except that a restricted set of requests are processed.
On this socket, the multiplexor will only process requests ask‐
ing for status; it will not accept any commands to do scanning
or that would consume a slave. See the SOCKET SPECIFICATION
section for the format of socket.
-p fileName
Causes mimedefang-multiplexor to write its process-ID (after
becoming a daemon) to the specified file.
-f filter_path
Normally, mimedefang-multiplexor executes a Perl filter script
called mimedefang.pl to scan the e-mail. However, you can have
it execute any program you like by specifying the full path to
the program with the -f option. This program must obey the pro‐
tocol documented in mimedefang-protocol(7); see that manual page
for details.
Note that the -f option does not specify the "filter" to use
with mimedefang.pl; instead, it specifies the program for
mimedefang-multiplexor to execute. You almost certainly should
not use this option unless you wish to replace mimedefang.pl
with your own program.
-F rules_path
Specifies the path to the filter rules. By default,
/usr/local/etc/mimedefang/mimedefang-filter is used. If you use
the -F option, its value is passed to the underlying Perl filter
program using -f.
-l Log certain events, including the output of the Perl slaves'
standard-error, using syslog. Normally, the multiplexor does
not log much information.
-d Write debugging information about event-handling code in
/var/log/mimedefang-event-debug.log. This is only of use to
people debugging mimedefang-multiplexor.
-R kbytes
Limits the resident-set size of the slave filter processes to
kbytes kilobytes. This limit is not supported on all operating
systems; it is known to work on Linux.
-M kbytes
Limits the total memory space of slave filter processes to
kbytes kilobytes. This limit is supported on all operating sys‐
tems which support the setrlimit(2) system call. This should
include most modern UNIX systems.
We recommend that you monitor your slave filter processes and
get a feel for how much memory they use. You should then limit
the memory to two or three times the worst-case that you have
observed. This can help mitigate denial-of-service attacks
which use complicated MIME messages to force mimedefang.pl to
consume lots of memory.
-h Print usage information and exit.
-t filename
Log statistical information to filename. See the section STA‐
TISTICS for more information.
-T Log statistical information using syslog(2). You may use any -t
and -T together, in which case statistical information is logged
in a file and using syslog.
-u Flush the statistics file after every write. Normally, mimede‐
fang-multiplexor does not flush the file; this is the best
choice for minimizing disk I/O on a busy mail server. However,
if you wish to watch statistics entries in real-time, you should
enable flushing.
-D Do not fork into the background and become a daemon. Instead,
stay in the foreground. Useful mainly for debugging or if you
have a supervisory process managing mimedefang-multiplexor.
-q queue_size
Normally, if all slaves are busy and mimedefang-multiplexor
receives another request, it fails it with the error "No free
slaves." However, if you use the -q option, then up to
queue_size requests will be queued. As soon as a slave becomes
free, the queued requests will be handed off in FIFO order. If
the queue is full and another request comes in, then the request
is failed with "No free slaves".
-Q queue_timeout
Queued requests should not stay on the queue indefinitely. If a
queued request cannot be processed within queue_timeout (default
30) seconds of being placed on the queue, it is failed with a
"Queued request timed out" message. See the section "QUEUEING
REQUESTS" for more discussion.
-O sock
Listen on a notification socket for connections from listeners.
mimedefang-multiplexor can inform external programs of state
changes by sending messages over a notification socket. The
external programs connect to this socket and then listen for
notifications. See the section SOCKET SPECIFICATION for the
format of sock.
See the mimedefang-notify(7) man page for details of the notifi‐
cation protocol.
-N map_sock
Listen on a map socket for Sendmail SOCKETMAP connections. As
of Sendmail 8.13, you can define a Sendmail map type that talks
to a daemon over a socket. mimedefang-multiplexor implements
that protocol; consult the mimedefang-filter(5) man page for
detils (see the SOCKET MAPS section).
See the section SOCKET SPECIFICATION for the format of map_sock.
-I backlog
When mimedefang-multiplexor creates a listening socket, it cal‐
culates the "backlog" argument to listen(2) based on the maximum
number of slaves. However, you can explicitly set this backlog
with the -I option. Setting the backlog to a high value (around
30-50) may help on a very busy server. If you see mail log mes‐
sages saying "MXCommand: socket: Connection refused" during busy
periods, then that's an indication you need a higher listen
backlog.
-L interval
Log the slave status every interval seconds. This logs a line
using syslog; the line looks like this:
Slave status: Stopped=s Idle=i Busy=b Killed=k Queued=q Msgs=m Activations=a
Here, "Stopped" is the number of non-running slaves, "Idle" is
the number of idle slaves, "Busy" is the number of busy slaves,
"Killed" is the number of killed slaves yet to be reaped,
"Queued" is the number of queued requests, "Msgs" is the total
number of messages processed since the multiplexor began run‐
ning, and "Activations" is the number of times a Perl process
has been started since the multiplexor began running.
If you supply an interval of 0 (which is the default), no peri‐
odic status logging is performed. If you supply an interval of
less than 5 seconds, it is silently reset to 5 seconds.
-S facility
Specifies the syslog facility for log messages. The default is
mail. See openlog(3) for a list of valid facilities. You can
use either the short name ("mail") or long name ("LOG_MAIL") for
the facility name.
-E Specifies that the multiplexor should create an embedded Perl
interpreter. This can improve performance dramatically. But
see the section "EMBEDDING PERL" for more information.
-X n Specifies that the multiplexor should initiate a "tick" request
every n seconds. This causes your filter_tick function (if
defined) to be called. Note that you have no control over which
slave executes filter_tick. If all slaves are busy when a tick
occurs, that tick request is skipped and a warning message is
logged.
-P n Specifies that the multiplexor should run n tick requests in
parallel. Each tick is run as often as specified with the -X
argument. (If you omit the -P option, then the multiplexor
behaves as if -P 1 had been specified.)
If you run parallel ticks, each tick is assigned an integer
identifying its "type". The type ranges from 0 to n-1. While
there may be as many as n tick requests running at a time, only
one tick of each type will be active at any time.
-Y label
Sets the tag used in the multiplexor's syslog messages to label
instead of mimedefang-multiplexor.
-G Normally, mimedefang-multiplexor uses a umask of 027 when creat‐
ing listening sockets. If you would like the sockets to be
readable and writeable by the group as well as the owner, supply
the -G option. This causes the umask to be 007 whenever UNIX-
domain sockets are created.
-y n Limits the maximum number of concurrent recipok checks to n on a
per-domain basis. The value of n can range from 0 (in which
case no limit is applied) to maxSlaves, where maxSlaves is the
argument to the -x option. If n is outside that range, it is
ignored (and no limit is applied.)
The recipok command ultimately invokes the filter_recipient
function in your filter. If you are doing recipient verifica‐
tion against servers that may be slow or unreliable, you can use
the -y option to limit the number of concurrent recipient veri‐
fications per domain. That way, if one domain's server becomes
very slow, it won't consume all available slaves for recipient
verification. Instead, its RCPT commands will be tempfailed and
there will be slaves available to handle RCPT commands for other
domains.
SOCKET SPECIFICATION
The -a, -N and -O options take a socket as an argument. This socket
can be specified as:
/path/to/socket
A UNIX-domain socket
inet:portnum
A TCP socket bound to port portnum, but which accepts connec‐
tions only from the IPv4 loopback address (127.0.0.1).
inet_any:portnum
A TCP socket bound to port portnum which will accept connections
from any address. Use inet_any with caution!
inet6:portnum
A TCP socket bound to port portnum listening on the IPv6 loop‐
back address.
inet6_any:portnum
A TCP socket bound to port portnum listening on the IPv6 wild‐
card address.
QUEUEING REQUESTS
Normally, if all slaves are busy, any additional requests are failed
immediately. However, the -q and -Q options allow you to queue
requests for a short amount of time. This facility is intended to
gracefully handle a temporary overload; most of the time, your queue
should be empty.
Because mimedefang checks the number of free slaves when a connection
is opened and fails the connection if there are no free slaves, the
intent of the queue is to allow SMTP transactions that are already
underway to continue if there is a slight overload. Any new connec‐
tions will be failed if all slaves are busy, but existing connections
are allowed to continue. Queuing requests may improve throughput on
extremely busy servers.
Note that if you supply the -q option to mimedefang, then even new con‐
nections are allowed to queue. This may improve throughput by keeping
the slave utilization higher.
The -R option to mimedefang can be used to reserve a specified number
of slaves for connections from the loopback address. Using the -R
option has the side-effect of permitting new connections from the loop‐
back address to queue.
EMBEDDING PERL
Normally, when mimedefang-multiplexor activates a slave, it forks and
execs mimedefang.pl. However, if the multiplexor was compiled with
embedded Perl support, and you supply the -E command-line option, the
multiplexor works like this:
1 It creates an embedded Perl interpreter, and sources mimede‐
fang.pl with a special command-line argument telling it to read
the filter, but not to enter the main loop.
2 Each time a slave is activated, the multiplexor calls fork() and
runs the mimedefang.pl main loop. This invokes filter_initial‐
ize and then runs the main loop.
On some platforms (for example, Red Hat Linux 7.3 with Perl 5.6.1), it
is not safe to destroy and recreate a Perl interpreter without causing
a memory leak. On those platforms, if you attempt to reread the filter
file (by sending the multiplexor a HUP signal or reread command), the
filter will not be re-read, and a message will be logged to syslog. On
those platforms, you must kill and restart MIMEDefang if you change the
filter file.
On most platforms, however, a filter reread is accomplished by destroy‐
ing and re-creating the embedded interpreter, re-sourcing mimedefang.pl
and killing slaves as soon as they are idle.
STATISTICS
With the -t option, mimedefang-multiplexor logs certain events to a
file. This file can be post-processed to gather statistics about the
multiplexor. You can use it to tune the number of slaves you run,
adjust timeouts, and so on.
Each line of the file looks like this:
YYYY/MM/DD:HH:MM:SS timestamp event key=val key=val...
Here, YYYY/MM/DD:HH:MM:SS is the local time of day. Timestamp is the
number of seconds since January 1, 1970. Event is the name of an
event. The valid events are:
StartSlave
A slave process has been started.
KillSlave
A slave process has been killed.
ReapSlave
A dead slave process has been reaped. It is possible to have a
ReapSlave event without a previous KillSlave event if the slave
process terminated abnormally.
StartFilter
A slave process has begun filtering an e-mail message.
EndFilter
A slave process has finished filtering an e-mail message.
The possible keys in the key=value pairs are:
slave=n
The slave involved in the event. Every slave is identified by a
small integer.
nslaves=n
The total number of running slaves immediately after the event
happened.
nbusy=n
The number of busy slaves (slaves which are processing an e-mail
message) immediately after the event happened.
reason="string"
The reason for a StartSlave or KillSlave event. (Present only
for these events.)
numRequests=n
The number of e-mails processed by the slave. Present only for
an EndFilter event.
If you send the mimedefang-multiplexor process a SIGHUP signal (kill -1
pid), it closes and reopens the statistics file. This is useful during
log file rotation.
If you send the mimedefang-multiplexor process a SIGINT signal (kill
-INT pid), it terminates all active-but-idle slaves. Also, any active-
and-busy slaves terminate as soon as they finish filtering the current
message. This is useful to force a reread of the filter rules file
without stopping and restarting Sendmail.
If you send the mimedefang-multiplexor process a SIGTERM signal (kill
pid), it terminates all slaves and exits immediately.
AUTHOR
mimedefang-mulitplexor was written by David F. Skoll <dfs@roaringpen‐
guin.com>. The mimedefang home page is http://www.mimedefang.org/.
SEE ALSOmimedefang.pl(8), mimedefang-filter(5), mimedefang(8), mimedefang-pro‐
tocol(7)4th Berkeley Distribution 8 February 2005 MIMEDEFANG-MULTIPLEXOR(8)
