[Mailman-Users] big lists, big messages

[Chuq Von Rospach]

On 5/12/01 6:52 PM, "Ian White" <iwhite at victoria.tc.ca> wrote:

> Which variables should be changed? It looks like the following could use
> some changes:
> SMTP_MAX_RCPTS = 500

Between 5 and 10 - that should be set for any mailman installation. 500 is
way too high for reasonable performance.

> MAX_DELIVERY_THREADS = 0

Zero. That's experimental and has been found not to be overly useful,
because the threads lock each other up. It'd need to be redone as processes.

Make sure you have:

DELIVERY_MODULE = 'SMTPDirect'

Not sendmail

QRUNNER_LOCK_LIFETIME = hours(10)
QRUNNER_PROCESS_LIFETIME = minutes(15)
QRUNNER_MAX_MESSAGES = 300

I set 

QRUNNER_LOCK_LIFETIME = hours(20)
QRUNNER_PROCESS_LIFETIME = hours(2)
QRUNNER_MAX_MESSAGES = 500000

What's important for a large list is that

QRUNNER_LOCK_LIFETIME  be longer than however long it takes to deliver your
really large message, or the system will assume the lock is dead and break
it. You don't want it too large, because if the system does lock for some
reason, it'll take a HUGE time to recover, so it takes some experimentation.

If this value is too small, it's VERY possible for qrunner to be delivering
your newsletter, for the lock to time out, and for another qrunner to start
up break the lock as dead, and start sending your newsletter out again --
you send out random numbers of duplicates until you figure it out or happen
to get in below the lock lifetime....