[Mailman-Developers] MM Bouncer

[Peter C. Norton]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 10:22:29AM -0800, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
> I said [ that is, "Peter C. Norton" <spacey-mailman@lenin.nu>]
> > So, to speculate, a sensible MTA puts metadata in a seperate file.
>  
> > The re-writing would be done on the way out to the remote host, and it would
> > be pretty cheap to implement at this phase.
> > 
> > Is this about the right idea?
> 
> If you're going to go that way, cut the MTA completely out of the loop.
> Simply write a delivery agent that writes directly out to the receiver's
> SMTP port, so it never actually touches disk unless the first delivery
> attempt fails for some reason (if it does, stuff it in a standard MTA and
> let it worry about redeliveries, unless you want to keep lots of state
> around). I've done some noodling on doing something like this, and if you do
> it right (it's a fair amount of work), you can really do some fun stuff,
> because you're literally writing the message on the fly out the wire.

It could be written as a before-the MTA, never-enque model, but it seems
like the design of courier and postfix make wedging in output modules
relatively easy.  Certianly easier then writing everything myself, and they
do all the work.  

> But ti's not worth it except for customized, high-volume operations. For 99%
> of mailman installations, it'd be hoplessly overkill technology, even if you
> want customized messages.

Definetely the high-volume impelmentation is overkill.  But the re-writing
engine would be valuable for any mailing list manager.

-- 
The 5 year plan:
In five years we'll make up another plan.
Or just re-use this one.