SMG Alert indicating bmserver crashed with signal 11 or signal 6

Products

• Messaging Gateway
• Messaging Gateway for Service Providers
• Messaging Gateway Hardware

Issue/Introduction

Alert messages are sent from Messaging Gateway (SMG) indicating that the Brightmail Engine / bmserver process has crashed with a signal 11 or signal 6.

Messaging Gateway may also begin holding messages in the Inbound and Outbound queues with a status of "421 4.4.7 [internal] Unable to process message at this time" and deferring new connections if the Inbound or Outbound queues have filled.

Signal 6 Alert

bmserver crashed on signal 6 on exit code: 0x0086 Program output: Error libcx_lib.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory loading libcx_lib.so pure virtual method called terminate called without an active exception Storing data in /data/scanner/jobs/bmserver/2023.04.10-13.19.47

 

Signal 11 Alert

 

bmserver crashed on signal 11 on exit code: 0x008B   Program output: Error libcx_lib.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory loading libcx_lib.so   Storing data in /data/scanner/jobs/bmserver/2023.04.10-17.36.11

 

maillog

2023 Apr 10 13:18:04 +03 (err) runner: [17076] Job bmserver process 19166 exited, terminated on signal 6 (0x0086).

Brightmail Engine / bmserver_log

2023-04-10T13:09:28+03:00 (WARNING:778.3939928192): [36003] Spamhunter module: failure loading rules from file /data/scanner/rules/bm_ruleset.2.spamhunter_rules.1681117716/rules.
2023-04-10T13:09:28+03:00 (ERROR:778.3939928192): [36101] Spamhunter Module: no rulesets loaded.
2023-04-10T13:09:28+03:00 (ERROR:778.3939928192): [36002] Spamhunter module: failure loading rules.
2023-04-10T13:09:28+03:00 (ERROR:778.3939928192): [36008] Spamhunter module: initialization failure.
2023-04-10T13:09:28+03:00 (ERROR:778.3939928192): [27258] init_modules: error while calling init function for critical module libspamhunter.  Restarting engine.

Cause

A malformed rule file caused the Brightmail Engine to repeatedly exit and restart. While the Brightmail Engine was in this state, messages could not be scanned and so accumulated in the Inbound and Outbound queues.

Resolution

This issue is an extremely rare occurrence in which a malformed rule file that could not be loaded by the Brightmail Engine.

The issue was resolved via a subsequent anti-spam rule update which replaced the malformed rule file. For typical configurations, no messages were lost or went unscanned.