Malformed email addresses bring server grinding to a halt (exhaust all memory)

[Mark Martinec]

Ben,

> > Which version of amavisd-new was that?
> 
> amavisd-new-2.6.4 (20090625)
> 
> > I'm not aware of similar problem with more recent version of amavisd-new,
> > I'd need to see a log at level 5 if this is the case.
> 
> Okay, I will try to reproduce the issue at log level 5. Unfortunately,
> this will bring down the server in question, but if it sheds some light
> on the root cause, I'm willing to do it.

If processing of the problem message never completed (crash
or aborted), the sample message may still be in a MTA queue,
or preserved in a temporary directory.

So if the same message can reproduce the problem, it should
suffice to turn up log level for a short time only, for as long
as the event is captured.

Alternative is to run amavisd temporarily from a command line
while capturing its output and stderr:
  # amavisd debug 2>&1 | tee 0.log
The 'debug' option implicitly turns up log level all the way.

Other more complex choices are to bring up another instance
of amavisd on a dedicated port, but I'll  not go into that
for the time being.

> I'll post back once I've had a chance to reproduce the issue.

Thanks!


  Mark