[Mailman-Developers] Mailman 2.1.5 'listinfo' command slow ...

[Mark Sapiro]

Christiaan den Besten wrote:
>
>Could someone please tell me why the "config.pck"'s of every list is completely read, copy'ed to config.pck.last etc on a 
>'/usr/bin/python -S /usr/lib/mailman/scripts/driver listinfo' call.


listinfo instantiates every list which involves reading the config.pck
because it needs to know whether the list is 'advertised' and in a
virtual hosts environment whether the list 'belongs' to the listinfo
host. It also needs to get the list's real_name and description for
listing on the listinfo page.


>We have some lists with a lot of recipients which results in a combined size of all config.pck's upto 40Mb. Having to write this 
>much data on a 'simple' (?) listinfo call makes the call very slow (5s or something like that ...).
>
>Why does it update the configs? Should it not only read info (list names/descriptions). Perhaps it would be a nice idea to split the 
>config and the recipients in separate files to prevent this ?


Normally the process you describe, reading the config.pck, pickling to
a temp file, renaming config.pck -> config.pck.last and renaming the
temp file -> config.pck, only occurs when the list is locked and
saved, neither of which are done by listinfo.

The only other time any writing is done is when the config.pck is
missing or corrupt and one of the fallback files config.pck.last,
config.db or config.db.last is used.

Are you sure the command

/usr/bin/python -S /usr/lib/mailman/scripts/driver listinfo

does any writing of config.pck files. It doesn't in my 2.1.7
installation, and I don't see why 2.1.5 would be any different.

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