[Mailman-Users] Extremely High Membership lists

[Gregory Leblanc]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Neil Cooler [mailto:ncooler at nandomedia.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 1:55 PM
> To: mailman-users at python.org
> Subject: [Mailman-Users] Extremely High Membership lists
> 
> Hi.
> 
> I was recently given the task of "upgrading" our mailing list software
> from majorodomo to either lyris or mailman.  We currently have at most
> 15,000 subscribers on about 20 or 30 majordomo lists. After evaluating
> both lyris and mailman, I have chosen mailman, because it seems to do
> just about everything that Lyris does, only smarter, and 
> because I'm an
> open source zealot.  This morning I put linux on a Dell Poweredge 2300
> Server (dual pentium II 400 processors), and installed 
> mailman and a few
> other things on the server.  I have now recieved notification that we
> will be adding well over 400,000 subscribers to our current base.  

Dang, that's a buncha people.  :-)

> First of all, can Mailman handle this? If so, do I need a 
> stronger box,
> and perhaps another MTA, maybe postfix?

I suspect that mailman can handle it, but it will probably need to be very
carefully handled.  From what I know about Sendmail, ditch it.  Neither
GNOME nor RedHat are using sendmail.  GNOME is running postfix, Redhat is
running qmail.  A lot of how mailman handles this load will depend on how
many lists it's spread out over, I think.  Check out the tuning options from
the mailman docs carefully, and try anything that could improve performance
now, to see whether or not it does.  That will be a busy server, any way you
go.  
	Grego