[Mailman-Users] slowness in listing mailing lists?

[Roberto Ullfig]

Ted Cabeen wrote:
> 
> In message <3891E34F.73CD6E72 at uchicago.edu>, Roberto Ullfig writes:
> >So why would it take so long to display the list of all mailman
> >lists that we run? We have about 450 lists and it takes just
> >over _1 minute_ for the list of lists to display. Meanwhile,
> >access to individual list pages takes only 1 second - so it's
> >not a slow server. Is there any way to speed up this time?
> 
> Mailman doesn't cache that data, because on a big server, the description or
> the visibility can change at any time.  Therefore, when you request the main
> list page, it has to go into every list's config.db file and check the
> description and the visibility to make an up-to-date list.  This obviously
> takes a while.  I think 1.1 sped it up a bit, but it still definitely takes a
> while.  Individual lists take much less time because there's only one file to
> open.
> 

O.K. I trussed the process and noticed that it stats _every
single_ config file before opening _each_ one so for 450 lists
that's 450 * 450 = 202,500 stat calls! It's no wonder it takes a
minute.

--
Roberto Ullfig : rullfig at uchicago.edu
Systems Administrator
Networking Services and Information Technologies
University of Chicago