[Mailman-Users] How to decrease high loads

[Sarah K. Miller]

Here's what's taking the server to it's knees. We're running Mailman 2.0,
beta6. So, in essence, is this a sendmail problem that might be solved if we
switch to a different MTA?


$ uptime
  2:49pm  up 94 day(s), 22:28,  1 user,  load average: 15.90, 7.21, 4.98
$ ps -ef |grep mailman
  daemon  2183  2176  5 14:49:15 ?        0:02 /usr/local/bin/python -S
/export/home/mailman/scripts/mailcmd tech.programming.
 mailman  2188  2186  1 14:49:26 pts/1    0:00 -ksh
  daemon  2178  2172  5 14:49:13 ?        0:02 /usr/local/bin/python -S
/export/home/mailman/scripts/mailcmd tech.programming.
 mailman  2134   173  0 14:49:00 ?        0:00 sh -c
/usr/local/bin/python -S /export/home/mailman/cron/qrunner
  daemon  2184  2179  6 14:49:16 ?        0:02 /usr/local/bin/python -S
/export/home/mailman/scripts/mailcmd tech.webdev.tools
  daemon  2196  2195  5 14:49:41 ?        0:01 /usr/local/bin/python -S
/export/home/mailman/scripts/mailcmd tech.webdev.tools
  daemon  2181  2177  5 14:49:15 ?        0:02 /usr/local/bin/python -S
/export/home/mailman/scripts/mailcmd tech.reviews
  daemon  2185  2180  5 14:49:17 ?        0:02 /usr/local/bin/python -S
/export/home/mailman/scripts/mailcmd tech.webdev.desig
  daemon  2182  2175  5 14:49:15 ?        0:02 /usr/local/bin/python -S
/export/home/mailman/scripts/mailcmd tech.webdev.infor
  daemon  2175  2168  0 14:49:12 ?        0:00 sh -c
/export/home/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd tech.webdev.information-archite
 mailman  2199  2188  0 14:50:00 pts/1    0:00 grep mailman
  daemon  2177  2169  0 14:49:13 ?        0:00 sh -c
/export/home/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd tech.reviews
  daemon  2180  2174  0 14:49:14 ?        0:00 sh -c
/export/home/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd tech.webdev.design
 mailman  2200   173  1 14:50:00 ?        0:00 sh -c
/usr/local/bin/python -S /export/home/mailman/cron/gate_news
  daemon  2176  2165  0 14:49:12 ?        0:00 sh -c
/export/home/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd tech.programming.visual-basic
  daemon  2195  2192  0 14:49:40 ?        0:00 sh -c
/export/home/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd tech.webdev.tools.dreamweaver
  daemon  2179  2173  0 14:49:13 ?        0:00 sh -c
/export/home/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd tech.webdev.tools
  daemon  2172  2163  0 14:49:11 ?        0:00 sh -c
/export/home/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd tech.programming.xml
 mailman  2139  2134  3 14:49:01 ?        0:01 /usr/local/bin/python -S
/export/home/mailman/cron/qrunner

> Without stats and logs on what those processes are, and what their
> observed runtime behaviour is I'm going to assume a few things: