[Mailman-Users] Throttling output

[Brad Knowles]

At 4:43 PM -0400 2006-06-14, Steve Campbell wrote:

>>  This is an MTA configuration issue.  There's nothing here to "fix"
>>  within Mailman.
>
>  I think I just discovered that Mailman does deliver to the mqueue directory.

	It has it's own internal queue directory, yes.  But it does not 
deliver directly to the MTA mqueue directory, no.  Instead, it hands 
the message off to the MTA that it is configured to use -- usually 
port 25 on the "localhost".

>  I don't know where I got the idea that it delivered outgoing mail on its
>  own. So yes, nothing to fix, just set up the proper outgoing queue runner
>  with a few sendmail configs.

	Not correct.  The easiest way would be to run two copies of the 
MTA on your machine.  One copy listens on port 25, and runs normally. 
This is for inbound mail.

	The other copy of sendmail listens on a different port (maybe 
port 26) on the "localhost" interface only, and on the command-line 
you give it a different configuration file to work from -- that 
configuration file causes the second copy of sendmail to work in 
"queueonly" mode, does not have any queue runners, and has a 
different mqueue directory.  You then control the queue runners for 
that second instance of sendmail yourself.

	You then configure Mailman to deliver all outgoing mail to this 
second copy of sendmail.


	I still think that this is not a good configuration for doing 
throttling, because you have only indirect controls over the number 
of message deliveries that occur in a given unit of time.

	The milter technique would be a much more direct method of 
control over throttling.

>>  It's an issue that should be easy enough to fix through modifying
>>  the configuration file.
>
>  I hope you mean sendmail configuration file!!!

	Yes.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  LOPSA member since December 2005.  See <http://www.lopsa.org/>.