[CentOS] OOM condition with file-4.17-9.0.1.el5

Hello all,

We just encountered several serious Out of Memory Problems caused by the 
file 4.17-9.0.1.EL5 utility on our mail Gateway. CentOS 5.1 kept it self 
alive by killing it parent process Amavisd-new. Manually restarting 
Amavisd-new and flushing the mail queue caused same problem. Disabling file 
for the moment, caused Amavisd-new to fail, and also defer all mail.

My quick and dirty solution was the download the Fedora Core 9's 
file.4.23-5.src.rpm. and rebuild it on CentOS 5 After upgrading file, 
restarting Amavisd-new and flushing the Postfix queue, all mail was 
delivered without problems.

Because our mail system went down, it didn't have the time to trace the 
message causing the problem.

But I want to share here that the Redhat / CentOS EL5 file utility has 
problems and provide a quick workaround for the problem.

Regards,

John
The Netherlands