[Mailman-Users] Mailman / Sendmail horribly slow performance..suggestions please?!?

Mon Aug 25 16:09:44 CEST 2003

The description of the problem fits right in with the primary DNS
resolver not working and the server having to fall back to the secondary
for each look up.

That might not be your problem, but in anycase, you should run a
local-caching Nameserver on your mailserver. Then check to see how long
it takes to do dns lookups:
  host -t mx some.host.com
  dig -t mx some.host.com

The "dig" command will tell you how long it took to get the dns
information.  The "host" command will simply give you the information
you requested - which in this case is a listing of the Mailservers for
the domain some.host.com

You might also want to tweak your sendmail configuration:
http://www.trilug.org/~jonc/mailserver/PartIII.html

BTW: the many MTA's use the "sendmail aliases style", the fact that
Mailman is using it to communicate with your MTA does not insure that
you are using Sendmail as your MTA.

To find out which MTA you are using:
  telnet localhost 25

Read the header it displays.  It should indicate what service is acting
as your MTA. As an example, here is what I get:
 220 Anncons4.nc.rr.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.8/8.12.8; Mon, 25 Aug 2003
10:07:09 -0400

As you can see, I'm running Sendmail on this particular server.

Good Luck - Jon Carnes

On Mon, 2003-08-25 at 09:28, Andrew Falgout wrote:
> The error log is at 0 bytes.  I have not overridden the Defaults.py which
> shows Defaults.py:MTA_ALIASES_STYLE = 'sendmail'.  So I assume that means
> that sendmail is the MTA.
> 
> Aug 25 08:08:31 2003 (27798) smtp for 2 recips, completed in 1.045 seconds
> Aug 25 08:08:31 2003 (27798) smtp for 2 recips, completed in 1.149 seconds
> Aug 25 08:12:47 2003 (27798) smtp for 1 recips, completed in 0.208 seconds
> Aug 25 08:12:47 2003 (27798) smtp for 1 recips, completed in 0.241 seconds
> Aug 25 08:14:25 2003 (31184) smtp for 1 recips, completed in 0.701 seconds
> Aug 25 08:14:25 2003 (31184) smtp for 1 recips, completed in 0.716 seconds
> Aug 25 08:17:21 2003 (31184) smtp for 1 recips, completed in 0.167 seconds
> Aug 25 08:17:21 2003 (31184) smtp for 1 recips, completed in 0.179 seconds
> Aug 25 08:19:34 2003 (31184) smtp for 1 recips, completed in 3.962 seconds
> Aug 25 08:19:34 2003 (31184) smtp for 1 recips, completed in 4.234 seconds
> 
> This is just a few of the lines in my /var/log/mailman/smtp file.  There are
> a few bounces from time to time, but not on great frequency.  I did send an
> email to a test list, and attempted to time when I would see my email
> address in the post log, but after 10 minutes I have not seen it.  This
> really confuses me, because the mail system on this server delivers mail
> directly to a mailbox in seconds.  Why the delay?
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Richard Barrett" <r.barrett at ftel.co.uk>
> To: "Andrew Falgout" <Andrew.Falgout at usm.edu>
> Cc: <mailman-users at python.org>
> Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2003 3:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Mailman / Sendmail horribly slow
> performance..suggestions please?!?
> 
> 
> >
> > On Sunday, August 24, 2003, at 12:51  am, Andrew Falgout wrote:
> >
> > > I'm currently running mailman-2.0.13-1 eith sendmail-8.11.6-25.72.
> > > Posts
> > > are processed very fast, but delivery is more than slow.  It takes 1-2
> > > minutes per post to delivery mail.  Evaluating what is going on in the
> > > queue is a little more than cumbersome.  Over the course of 3-4 days
> > > mails
> > > have been piling up in the qfiles directory to the tune of 4000 mails
> > > and
> > > waiting.  There are mails 3 days old waiting to go out.  I'm looking
> > > for
> > > ways to evaluate what is in the queue, why it's in the queue, and how
> > > to
> > > tell qrunner to report more information on what it's thinking.  Like
> > > perhaps the msgid of the email it's trying to process at this time.
> > >
> > Are you using the local sendmail instance as the outgoing SMTP server?
> >
> > Regardless, what do the Mailman post, smtp and smtp-failure logs show
> > about mail being handled by the system. How does this tie in with the
> > MTA's mail log.
> >
> > If your outgoing mail is being handled by the local sendmail MTA then I
> > would normally expect Mailman to handoff to the MTA without much delay.
> > If MM is having problems handing off to sendmail then you might find
> > some evidence of this in the smtp-failure log.
> > > -- 
> > > Thank You,
> > > Andrew
> > >
> > > -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+--+-+-
> > > +-+-+-
> > > -      Andrew Wilson Falgout (RHCE)               Linux, E Pluribus
> > > UNIX!  -
> > > -      Systems Admin  II, TIU               Office:  (601) 266-5603
> > >     -
> > > -      University of Southern Mississippi
> > >     -
> > > -                                              Fax:  (601) 266-6788
> > >     -
> > > -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
> > > +-+-+-+
> >
> >
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> 
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