[Mailman-Users] (no subject)

[J C Lawrence]

On Tue, 4 Apr 2000 12:27:55 -0400 
Jerry Thomas <jerry at scoregroup.com> wrote:

> I am running mailman on a redhat 6.1 box with sendmail.  The
> distribution list which we post to has about 50,000 people on it
> and is getting killed with our weekly mailings. I have heard that
> FREEBSD with postfix is more efficient any suggestions?

In exactly what way is it "getting killed"?

General advice:

  -- Lose sendmail.  Postfix is an excellent choice to use instead,
as is Exim or Qmail.  I use Exim on my sytems (Postifx wasn't out
when I built them and I can't be bothered to change a working
system).  Were I to chose now I'd go with Postfix.  The simple
change of MTA (and its behaviours) could be all you're looking for.

Does it just take a long time to post messages to the list and
system load goes very high?

  -- See if it improves when you turn off archiving for that list.

  -- Make sure that SMTP_MAX_RCPTS is set high in Defaults.py (500
     is default).  Note: this will slow mail delivery by throttling
     your MTA's queue runners thru lock contention.

Mail takes a long time to leave your spool, and members have to wait 
a long time to get their mail?

  -- Lose sendmail.  Go with Postfix, Exim, or QMail.  The change in
queue handling algorithms among the MTAs can boost performance
significantly.  Also up the number of configured queue runners for
your MTA (for my systems that run large lists I usually use between
30 and 100 queue runners).  Watch your system load values to while
do this to get the balance you want.

-- 
J C Lawrence                                 Home: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                              Other: coder at kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--