[afnog] high disk access on mail server

[Brian Candler]

On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 11:04:45AM +0300, Mike Barnard wrote:
>    i restarted it and monitored it for a while and it seems that when one
>    email account (systems-at-one2net-dot-co-dot-ug) receives an email,
>    the disk writes hit the roof and this seems to freeze everything.

Is it definitely when an incoming mail arrives for this account, not when
they check their mail?

Anything in the exim logs when this happens?

Does systems at one2net.co.ug account have any funky forwarding, procmail or
spam filtering? Try

# exim -bt systems at one2net.co.ug

to see if it gives you a clue.

You could try to confirm the problem like this:

# ktrace -id exim -f you at yourdomain.co.ug systems at one2net.co.ug
Subject: test mail

testing
.

If that causes the disk load to go through the roof again, then you can look
at kdump to see what the exim process is doing.

HTH,

Brian.