[Mailman-Users] Newbie Questions

[Larry Hansford]

At 02:57 PM 2/7/2003, you wrote:
>Hi -
>I am fairly new to using Linux and webservers and mailservers and ...
>etc., but I have a desire to use Mailman to solve a mailing list problem
>that I am having right now.  I have a few questions to ask before I go
>to install Mailman.
>
>First, the server that I will be installing on is currently used to
>serve a very popular website, and though it isn't under nearly its
>maximum load, I don't know how much load I will be adding by using
>Mailman, and the site being served is far more important than
>streamlining the mailing list capabilities.

Mailman will have very minimal performance impact, other than handing off 
batches of mail to STMP to mail out.  I have a number of servers set up 
with Postfix 2, Amavis-new,  and Mailman 2.1, with some lists much bigger 
than the 1500 you indicate, and have never had a problem with the heavy 
activity on the various lists.


>For the time being at least, there will be only one mailing list which
>will have about 1500 users, and an average of two relatively simple
>messages sent each week.  The messages are sent to a total (based on the
>current list) of 33 hosts, with the vast majority (about 80% right now)
>going all to one host.  A few others take up most of the rest of the
>slack (aol, hotmail, and yahoo account for about 16% total, leaving 4%
>to the other 29 hosts).  From watching a few refreshes on "top", just a
>few moments ago in what is near the peak time for the server, there were
>always at least 25% of the server CPU resources free (ranging up to
>about 50% depending on the refresh).  The server has a 2GHz processor
>with 1.5GB RAM (I don't know much more of the specs, but I can find out
>easily enough).
>
>The server is running qmail (for which I saw instructions in the INSTALL
>file), so I'm confident that that won't be a problem.  Python is
>installed, ...

I don't use qmail, so can't address that.  Postfix works very smoothly, though.


>Finally - one question about the features of Mailman.  Is it possible to
>set up a "mail merge" (like with MS Word or other word processing
>software) so that I could put something like :firstname: in the outgoing
>mail and have Mailman replace it with its stored First name for that
>address (basically to personalize the outgoing message).

Never heard of it, but since you send "A" message to the Mailman list, and 
it sends it to the list members, I don't know how/why you'd use a "mail 
merge" program.  That would send a list of messages to Mailman, so it would 
attempt to distribute each message to the entire list.

But, I'm not really sure what you mean by "personalize the outgoing 
message".  As it is, each message is sent from the list with the sender's 
name as the "From" address and the list name in the "To" address.  Of 
course, there are customizations in the configuration for eahc list.

Larry


>Thanks a bunch.
>
>Edward Bynum