Modify the Number of cPanel SpamAssassin Processes

While cPanel does allow you to use the Spam Assassin service to filter spam from your email server, it does not setup any optimial values and will setup a detail limit of 20. The  result of this is that the Spam Assassin service will crash if you server is receiving a high number of emails at any given time. This will show up in your error logs as the following error:

"spamd failed @ Wed Sep 15 08:52:12 2010. A restart was attempted automagically."

This is due to the number of processes that Spam Assassin is currently running. You can correct this by installing the Spam Assassin plugin for cPanel and then modifying the number of processes that can be ran. To do so, you will need to do the following.

1. Log into your WHM panel by going to Https://yourip.com:2087.
2. Once you have logged in, you will need to navigate to the "Manage Plugins" link. You can also type in "Manage Plugins" in the search box, at the upper left hand site of the screen. Once you have found the link, click "Manage Plugins".
   

   

3. Once you have done this, you will now need to locate the cPanel "Spamdconf" plugin. By default it is not installed, but it will be listed. If you have already had our Hosting.com support install this for you, do not click on the "Uninstall Spamdconf", as doing so will revert any changes. If you have not had support do this for you already, please click on the "Install Spamdconf" button. This will install the plugin that we will need for step 4.



4. Now that the "Spamdconf" plugin has been installed, we can access the actual plugin. To do so, please navigate back to the WHM home screen. The Plugin section will now appear at the both of the left hand side screen. In this section you will now see the "Setup Spamd Startup Configuration" plugin. Click on this to proceed.



5. You will now see the "SpamD Startup Configuration". This will allow you to setup the maximum number of Spam Assasin processes (Children), the maximum number of connections per children and will also let you restrict connections per specific IP address to Spam Assassin. Here you will want to modify the Maximum Children value. Setting it lower will help save server resources, such as memory and cpu, and will help keep your server online in the event that your email server is flooded. We recommend a value of 5-6 for a baseline configuration. You can then increase the number of processes allowed as needed. When you are finished with your changes, make sure you click on the submit button to save them.