PMAS trouble
As it turned out, the big problem with this new version is that PTSMTP – the controller process – seems to have big problems. The author of the program (Hunter Goatley) has given a number of settings to see what’s going on.
The first thought was it didn’t listen to port 2525 at all, or didn’t receive anything. But with the logging enabled, it became clear immediately that it did: Each new message did trigger a worker to get to work, it gets the primary data and than passes control to the controller, and there it waits for the controller to return a result – and the worker will wait until, well, eternity.
The result is that with the next message arriving, the next worker is set to work; if it’s not there yet, it will be created, started, set to work, until the maximum is reached. That one will stop working, to make room for the next.
And so on, and so on. If that clearing takes place…
The net result is that not any message is actually handled, and the sender times out. It does not mean the worker is stopped, or that it’s signalled by the controller.
Hunter has offered to check on the system, and I set up an account, but he was not yet able to login due to a blockage somewhere on the route.
It ended, once more, in bypassing PMAS alltogether, and keep track of all spam by hand. Not a problem for a few days. Up to Sunday evening about 90 messages have been deleted.