[Mailman-Users] Mail Delay

[Brad Knowles]

At 8:19 PM -0800 2005-01-10, S. Backman wrote:

>                                      All mail seems to hit the server within
>  a few minutes but it's held up at the server for all this time until it is
>  finally released.  It's either mailman or sendmail - or something else -
>  that's causing this problem.  We're not sure what.  Anyone seen this issue
>  before?  Can you help?

	Take a look at your logs.  See if the delay is inside of Mailman, 
or the MTA.


	One problem I've seen in the past is where a queue directory 
manages to build up to a very large size (perhaps due to an e-mail 
outage).  Because directory entries are used in first-in-first-out 
order, and the entire directory has to be scanned before the server 
can be sure that there aren't any more messages to be processed, this 
can cause significant delays.

	If you suspect that this is the case for you, you'll need to stop 
the MTA and Mailman, rename the offending queue directory, create a 
new one by the same name, make sure the new directory has the same 
ownership/group/privileges, move over all the contents of the old 
directory, and then restart Mailman and the MTA.


	But this is just one possibility.  There are any other number of 
things that could be going wrong, and you need to look at your logs 
before you can start to get an idea of where the problem really is.

-- 
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

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.