Sendmail and high kernel CPU utilisation

Travis Fitch travis at fitch.id.au
Wed Jun 21 07:37:11 UTC 2006


Travis Fitch wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was hoping someone might be able to shed some light on an issue I am
> having with sendmail on FreeBSD 5.2.1 running on a Sun V120.
>
> If you look at the snippet from top you can see that several sendmail
> process are casing the kernel to use ~ 65% of the CPU. I am having some
> issues profiling what is causing this issue. You can also see the load is
> quite high.
>
> last pid: 72705;  load averages: 12.22, 12.29, 12.00
> up 1+06:09:44  11:42:28
> 86 processes:  14 running, 72 sleeping
> CPU states: 35.5% user,  0.0% nice, 64.5% system,  0.0% interrupt,  0.0%
> idle
> Mem: 148M Active, 104M Inact, 73M Wired, 520K Cache, 60M Buf, 131M Free
> Swap: 2057M Total, 102M Used, 1954M Free, 4% Inuse
>
>   PID USERNAME  PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU    CPU COMMAND
> 20958 root      122    0 23368K  5472K RUN     44:32  8.64%  8.64% sendmail
> 62864 root      122    0 23432K  5528K RUN     10:45  8.54%  8.54% sendmail
> 70522 root      122    0 23448K  5544K RUN      2:43  8.35%  8.35% sendmail
> 91279 smmsp     122    0 12224K  3832K RUN     60:17  8.25%  8.25% sendmail
> 66302 root      122    0 23392K  5472K RUN      8:36  8.25%  8.25% sendmail
> 16850 root      122    0 23432K  5528K RUN     51:31  8.20%  8.20% sendmail
> 66306 root      121    0 23448K  5528K RUN      8:34  8.11%  8.11% sendmail
> 68330 root      121    0 23432K  5528K RUN      5:37  8.11%  8.11% sendmail
> 51654 root      121    0 23392K  5472K RUN     16:40  8.06%  8.06% sendmail
> 66377 root      121    0 23392K  5472K RUN      8:22  8.01%  8.01% sendmail
> 69364 root      121    0 23432K  5504K RUN      3:50  8.01%  8.01% sendmail
>
>
> The other interesting thing is that a lot of the SMTP connections hang
> around for quite some time. These connection just keep building up and
> slowly bring the system to a crawl.
>
> correo:root# ps aux| grep -v grep | grep sendmail
> root   62864  8.0  1.1 23432 5528  ??  R    10:06AM  10:49.58 sendmail:
> k5J06CMN062864 mx02.globalcenter.net.au [203.89.192.35]: DATA (sendmail)
> root   66306  8.0  1.1 23448 5528  ??  R    10:18AM   8:38.72 sendmail:
> k5J0IoxC066306 omta02ps.mx.bigpond.com [144.140.83.154]: DATA (sendmail)
> root   66377  7.9  1.1 23392 5472  ??  R    10:20AM   8:26.25 sendmail:
> k5J0KHGa066377 vpn02.commandhub.net [203.89.202.122]: DATA (sendmail)
> root   20958  8.0  1.1 23368 5472  ??  R     5:14AM  44:36.44 sendmail:
> k5IJF2bd020958 [83.173.162.41]: DATA (sendmail)
> root   68330  8.0  1.1 23432 5528  ??  R    10:43AM   5:41.33 sendmail:
> k5J0hOAk068330 mx01.globalcenter.net.au [203.89.192.34]: DATA (sendmail)
> root   69364  8.0  1.1 23432 5504  ??  R    10:59AM   3:54.45 sendmail:
> k5J0xmg6069364 omta05ps.mx.bigpond.com [144.140.83.195]: DATA (sendmail)
> root   70522  8.0  1.1 23448 5544  ??  R    11:11AM   2:47.79 sendmail:
> k5J1BY7Y070522 mx01.globalcenter.net.au [203.89.192.34]: DATA (sendmail)
> root   66302  8.0  1.1 23392 5472  ??  R    10:18AM   8:40.20 sendmail:
> k5J0If8t066302 vpn02.commandhub.net [203.89.202.122]: DATA (sendmail)
> smmsp  91279  8.0  0.7 12224 3832  ??  Rs    4:01AM  60:20.92 sendmail:
> Queue runner at 00:10:00 for /var/spool/clientmqueue (sendmail)
> root   16850  8.0  1.1 23432 5528  ??  R     4:30AM  51:34.91 sendmail:
> k5IIUaWm016850 [201.150.67.51]: DATA (sendmail)
> root   51654  8.0  1.1 23392 5472  ??  R     9:37AM  16:44.52 sendmail:
> k5INbbYo051654 vpn02.commandhub.net [203.89.202.122]: DATA (sendmail)
> root   91276  0.0  1.0 22928 5032  ??  Ss    4:01AM   0:03.05 sendmail:
> rejecting connections on daemon MSA: load average: 12 (sendmail)
>
> I have rebuilt the world and kernel to see if the resolves my issue, but
> alas no luck.
>
> Hopefully someone will be able to point be in the right direction.
>
> Regards,
>
> Travis
>
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>   
Further to this, when I put truss or ktrace into action on one of the 
sendmail process that is using a lot of kernel time, I see the following

gettimeofday(0x40dfc210,0x0)                     = 0 (0x0)
poll(0x30e000,0x1,0xffffffffffffffff)            = 1 (0x1)
gettimeofday(0x40dfc210,0x0)                     = 0 (0x0)
poll(0x30e000,0x1,0xffffffffffffffff)            = 1 (0x1)
gettimeofday(0x40dfc210,0x0)                     = 0 (0x0)
poll(0x30e000,0x1,0xffffffffffffffff)            = 1 (0x1)
gettimeofday(0x40dfc210,0x0)                     = 0 (0x0)
poll(0x30e000,0x1,0xffffffffffffffff)            = 1 (0x1)
gettimeofday(0x40dfc210,0x0)                     = 0 (0x0)
poll(0x30e000,0x1,0xffffffffffffffff)            = 1 (0x1)
gettimeofday(0x40dfc210,0x0)                     = 0 (0x0)
poll(0x30e000,0x1,0xffffffffffffffff)            = 1 (0x1)
gettimeofday(0x40dfc210,0x0)                     = 0 (0x0)
poll(0x30e000,0x1,0xffffffffffffffff)            = 1 (0x1)
gettimeofday(0x40dfc210,0x0)                     = 0 (0x0)
poll(0x30e000,0x1,0xffffffffffffffff)            = 1 (0x1)
gettimeofday(0x40dfc210,0x0)                     = 0 (0x0)
poll(0x30e000,0x1,0xffffffffffffffff)            = 1 (0x1)
gettimeofday(0x40dfc210,0x0)                     = 0 (0x0)
poll(0x30e000,0x1,0xffffffffffffffff)            = 1 (0x1)
gettimeofday(0x40dfc210,0x0)                     = 0 (0x0)

I am not running ntpd atm, however ntpdate to pool.ntp.org syncs ok.

Does, this help shed some light?

Regards,

Travis


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