[Mailman-Developers] VERPing: ouch!

[Fil]

> >        for 152991 recips, completed in 31782.241 seconds
> 
> 	How does this compare to a normal, non-VERPed delivery for this list?

grep -E "1..... recips" logs/smtp

May 27 16:43:46 2004 (440) <20040527135407.74A5F368143 at alan.rezo.net> smtp
        for 151942 recips, completed in 1231.438 seconds
Jun 11 19:05:45 2004 (440) <20040611163245.ED9CB3680AE at alan.rezo.net> smtp
        for 152333 recips, completed in 649.634 seconds
Jun 30 15:39:26 2004 (435) <20040630132741.F1A0836811C at alan.rezo.net> smtp
        for 152717 recips, completed in 428.891 seconds
Jul 13 02:05:22 2004 (435) <20040712150834.DCA153680BD at alan.rezo.net> smtp
        for 152991 recips, completed in 31782.241 seconds


> 	I ask because Chuq Von Rospach has done some calculations on what 
> should theoretically happen to your performance if you enable VERP, 
> but I don't know of anyone who has actually timed the performance 
> difference on large lists.

Usually the sending (mailman to postfix to 90% of users) takes a bit more
than two hours ; yesterday it took about 6 hours. But more importantly, the
Mailman -> postfix thing took 5 hours instead of ~ 15 minutes.


> 	This is really more of an MTA limitation, although there might be 
> some things we can do to try to work around it with Mailman.  For 
> example, it might be faster/lower overall load on the server if we 
> had the MTA do the VERPing for us -- we're pretty sure that's 
> supported by some MTAs (e.g., at least some versions of Exim), and we 
> know it's faster for at least some of them (e.g., Exim).

Probably, yes. I don't konw if postfix can do it "on demand", though there
is http://www.postfix.org/VERP_README.html

-- Fil