[Mailman-Developers] [Mailman-checkins] SF.net SVN: mailman: [8041] trunk/mailman/Mailman

[Brad Knowles]

At 6:33 PM -0700 9/27/06, Carson Gaspar wrote:

>  I love the idea. A fork/exec per message always makes me twitch... I have a
>  feeling it would also provide better fault-tolerance, especially in a
>  replicated filesystem cluster, where you have clear atomic behaviour at
>  your disposal.

I agree that fork()/exec() is not an ideal model here, but then 
postfix doesn't use that model internally -- it uses a single parent 
with multiple child processes, and then hands off sockets.  It also 
keeps pretty much the entire working queue in memory, as opposed to 
single-threading through the filesystem.

I don't see how using Maildir is going to solve any of these 
problems.  IMO, if we're going to learn from postfix, I think we 
should learn the right things and take away the right lessons, and 
not just glom onto some alternative technique that has been known to 
have a whole host of other problems.

-- 
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

  Founding Individual Sponsor of LOPSA.  See <http://www.lopsa.org/>.