Runaway greylisting processes, cpu usage sky high

[JamieB]

PRODUCT, VERSION, OPERATING SYSTEM, ARCHITECTURE
Parallels Plesk Panel 9.2.1 RedHat el4 92090422.13 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION AND STEPS TO REPRODUCE
Symptoms:
Entire server slows down to a crawl, as runaway greylisting
processes (top list shows several "executable" processes) aren't terminated.

Repeated entries like this, with different emails listed...
root 26542 1.1 0.0 3980 1052 ? R 04:17 3:01 /usr/local/psa/handlers/info/05-grey-G9v07D/executable context [email protected] [email protected]
Load Average climbed upto almost 390.00
Unable to reproduce. First time this has happened, not certain what made it behave abnormally.

I have come across http://kb.odin.com/en/6875, but although the symptoms are similar, I don't get any memory error in the logs, so not sure applying the hotfix will address this problem as well.

Possibly related, maillog contains errors like these:

Jan 13 08:44:50 qmail-queue-handlers[14560]: handlers_stderr: executable: bw_lists.c:88: gl_mailname_status: Assertion `from != ((void *)0) && *from !
= '\0'' failed.
Jan 13 08:44:50 qmail-queue-handlers[14560]: fork_execv_fd: The child process with pid 14561 killed by signal 6
Jan 13 08:44:50 qmail-queue-handlers[14560]: call_handlers: Error during call '/usr/local/psa/handlers/info/05-grey-G9v07D/executable' handler
Jan 13 08:44:50 qmail-queue-handlers[14560]: LOG Internal error in handler '05-grey-G9v07D'. Skip handler.

and

Jan 13 14:03:18 greylisting filter[31445]: Starting greylisting filter...
Jan 13 14:03:18 greylisting filter[31445]: Unable to create regexp for [email protected]. Buffer too short
Jan 13 14:03:18 greylisting filter[31445]: Unable to get data database after selection query: not an error
Jan 13 14:03:18 greylisting filter[31445]: Unable to get GL status for remote hostname.
Jan 13 14:03:18 greylisting filter[31445]: Unable to check message
Jan 13 14:03:18 qmail-queue-handlers[31444]: call_handlers: Error during call '/usr/local/psa/handlers/info/05-grey-G9v07D/executable' handler
Jan 13 14:03:18 qmail-queue-handlers[31444]: LOG Internal error in handler '05-grey-G9v07D'. Skip handler.

Does the hotfix apply to my issue and would it help to use mchk and is it safe to use(won't delete mail or accounts?) - http://kb.odin.com/944

Thanks

 

[IgorG]

Does the hotfix apply to my issue and would it help to use mchk and is it safe to use(won't delete mail or accounts?) - http://kb.odin.com/944

Yes, you can safely use it. And you have reported problem for very old 9.2.1 version. Why you don't want update it to latest 9.5.4 version?

 

[JamieB]

Thanks for the reply. If I update Plesk, is it better to do it incrementally upto 9.5.4 or directly to 9.2.1 - 9.5.4?
And should I still apply hotfix and perform mchk before update?

 

[IgorG]

You can perform upgrade directly from your version to 9.5.4 and you can run mchk at any time.