[ILUG] sendmail probs - spamassassin to blame?

Tue Apr 8 22:58:50 IST 2008

Hi.
I'm running Gutsy Gibbon - have my work email sent directly via 
sendmail/smtp to my mail spool dir.

All well until this morning when I started getting phonecalls that emails 
to me were bouncing.

What is wierd is that I get a burst of say 20-40 rejected messages
======8<========
Apr  8 22:21:46 jkcray sm-msp-queue[22055]: m38LK1wX022055: to=postmaster, 
delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=relay, pri=38873, 
relay=[127.0.0.1]
[127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection refused by [127.0.0.1]
======8<========
in /var/log/mail.log every few minutes.

Between these bursts I can send and receive email but not during them.
Googling suggests that spamassassin might be the culprit?

I've tried editing sendmail.mc and rebuilding sendmail.cf with larger 
value for the "throttle" settings but that didnt help.

Needless to say I had not changed any system setting in last 7 days but a 
central ul mail server did go down last night - though the net admins say 
it is not relevant.

Suggestions very welcome.

John

John A. Kinsella		Ph: 	+353-61-202148 		(Direct)
 					+353-61-333644 x 2148  	(Switch)
Mathematics Dept.		e-mail: John.Kinsella at ul.ie
University of Limerick		FAX: 	+353-61-334927
IRELAND				Web:    http://jkcray.maths.ul.ie