Brennan Stehling wrote:
I have been using SpamAssassin, but I have had problems where incoming spam causes the server to become unresponsive for long periods of time.
This is obviously unacceptable. I am pretty sure the biggest part of the problem is that fact that is running with Perl. I have had problems with Perl before when I wrote CGI applications where it can lock up a server if you are handling a lot of data.
Have you tried running spamassassin as a daemon - that way it won't be started each time you get a new email? This requires you running spamassassin via your mail server (e.g. Postfix) instead of through a mail delivery agent such as procmail. I use this method on my server and I've never noticed the load going above about 0.01. Searching for spamassassin spamd on Google should bring up some useful information.
Paul