[Mailman-Users] Administrative actions extremely slow

[Mark Sapiro]

Brian J Mingus wrote:

>I am moderating a list with 4200 members. Clicking on any link is extremely
>slow.


I assume you are talking about links in the 'admindb' interface. How
about the 'admin' interface?

Does this depend at all on how many requests are waiting moderator
action?


>I have asked that our server be upgraded, but I was told that the
>problem is with the mailman software. They claim that every time I try to
>perform any action mailman scans through every user.


Well, Mailman does instantiate the list which, assuming the default
membership data, includes the list membership. This requires that the
CGI process read and unpickle the list and membership configuration
file. For a list with 4200 members, this file is probably on the order
of 800 or 900 KB, and the unpickling should go almost as fast as the
physical reading, so unless this file is stored on a network file
system with slow access as opposed to a local disk on the Mailman
server, I don't thing that should be an issue.


>I have no ability to
>verify the validity of this claim as I don't have access to the server.
>
>I desperately need a fix to this problem. I just clicked on the link to the
>admin interface and it took 19 seconds. That's partly due to the fact that I
>just let three mails through, so the server is sending 12,000 e-mails.


Or possibly it's due to the list's being locked due to the processing
of the mail being sent.


>But
>even when it's not sending e-mails it takes at least 10 seconds. Given the
>simplicity of the admin interfaces it ought to be lightning fast.


Are you talking about the 'admin' interface or the 'admindb' interface?
please clarify. I.e. is the portion of the URL between the
host/mailman/ and /listname 'admin' or 'admindb'?


>Due to the slowness of the mailman interface I can no longer afford to send
>custom reject messages - I just discard all mails that I don't want to get
>through. I consider this to be rude to those subscribers who sent their
>e-mail in good faith even though it was not topical.
>
>Please let me know if you can think of a fix or troubleshooting steps for me
>to recommend.


The length of time for the admindb interface to load is usually
proportional to the number of requests waiting action and the number
of list members shouldn't have much to do with it.

You might try loading other pages such as the listinfo overview (which
requires instantiating every list in the installation) and the list
specific listinfo just for comparison.

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