[Mailman-Users] Large list problem

[Chance Eppinette]

Hello,

I am running Mailman 2.1.5 on a Solaris 2.8 SUN 280R (fully loaded).

I have a number of lists but 1 in particular is giving me problems.  The
list currently has about 14000 members of which about 1100 are disabled due
to bounces.
The problem seems to arise when a message is sent to the list (around every
2-3 weeks).

The CPU time for a python process jumps up to around 50% for an indetermined
amount of time (> 24 hours).
While the system is "working" on this list message, GUI access to the list
is nearly impossible (can't login); while other lists seem to function OK.
Up to this point I have had to stop/kill all Mailman processes and then
restart Mailman several times to bring things back to normal with the List
service.
The intended message being sent to the list does arrive in users mailboxes
(which are worldwide).

I believe the culprit to be a combination of managing the number of bounces
due to the size of the list membership.

Also, we prefer that once a member has been disabled for 3 bounces, that it
also be unsubscribed from the list.  This does seem to occur, but it seems
to take forever to occur.  Like I said there are about 1100 addresses
disabled right now.  However, they have yet to be removed.  It is like the
system is waiting on something else to occur, but I don't know what.

Are there any recommendations....

Many thanks,

Chance Eppinette
Technology Support Manager
ULM Computing Center
eppinette at ulm.edut 
318-342-5021 (phone)
318-342-5018 (fax)