[Mailman-Users] mailman minimal (memory) requirements?

[Mark Sapiro]

Brad Knowles wrote:

>Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:
>
>> Is it possible to minimize the memory usage by only running some parts
>> of mailman (i.e., I only want the archive be viewable via the web
>> interface).
>
>I don't think you're going to cut down those memory requirements by much,
>at least not for Mailman itself.  You might be able to find a web server
>that requires less swap and RAM, and an MTA that is lighter in
>requirements, but in my experience Mailman itself is pretty much the same
>all over.


To elaborate a bit, as Brad says, you need to have a web server and MTA
running. Other than that, there is no constant, even when idle, memory
usage by Mailman to support the web interface or incoming mail.
Incoming mail causes the MTA to invoke the mail wrapper which receives
the mail and passes it to a python process which stores it it the
appropriate queue and exits. Likewise, a web request causes the web
server to invoke a CGI wrapper which passes the request to a python
process which produces the output page and exits.

The heavy, continuous memory usage is in the queue runners. You may not
need to run NewsRunner at all. You can eliminate it by adding

QRUNNERS.remove(('NewsRunner',1))

to mm_cfg.py. The other 7 runners are required at least occasionally so
you can't just remove them. With a moderate amount of hacking, you
could probably revert to the old method of qrunners being started at
intervals by cron and exiting when they have nothing to do. If you
staggered the schedule, you might be able to achieve a situation where
only one or two runners were ever running at the same time. Also, some
runners like BounceRunner and RetryRunner could be run significantly
less frequently than others.

The downside to this is there is a lot of repeated work in starting the
runners, but if you have sufficient cpu and disk i/o capacity, this
might be a viable way to cut down on memory utilization.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan