Hello guys!

I just installed amavis/spamassassin/clamav following this guide:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PostfixAmavisNew

I have a Linode 768 running Ubuntu 10.4 64-bit, and clamd is taking about 22% of RAM and amavisd (installed amavisd-new) is taking about 12% for each process (master + 2 child).

Searched all around and found no tip on optimization for those two beasts I could use so far.

Can anyone give a hand?

Thanks in advance!

switch to 32 bit, 64 bit is wasted on a linode 768. Also consider outsourcing your email, managing an email server is generally a pain.

There may be optimizations available, but content-based scanning is always going to be resource intensive. I recommend configuring Postfix with some basic sanity checks. Before adopting that page's settings for reject_rbl_client, look at the policies and history for those blacklists to be sure they are agreeable to you. A lot of blacklists can be overly aggressive (IMO).

I have found greylisting to be of immense value in stopping spam. The downside is that you will experience a delay in mail being delivered to you from a new source. The trade-off is worth it to me, but others have their own opinions.

Even if you feel like you cannot do away with content-based scanning completely, these methods will reduce the volume of mail that has to be processed by ClamAV and Amavis.

Thanks for the advice, guys.

Simply by switching to 32 bit Ubuntu clamd now uses about 17% (versus 22% on 64-bit) and each amavisd-new process about 7% (versus 12% on 64 bit).

Since I'll serve few email accounts, but for 4 diffrerent domains, I don't think I'd bother using, for example, Google Mail unless, for some reason, I feel the need to free more resources to other tasks.

Thank you for your time and references pointed.