[Mailman-Users] List performance queries

[Ed Wilts]

I'm currently running Mailman 2.0.13 with sendmail on a PII/450 Linux system. 
My Mailman usage has been light and small lists.  Now, my internal
clients wants to send a mailing to 50,000 users (yes, they're opt-in!).
What gotchas do I really need to be aware of?  Initially, this first
large batch will go to users of which over 90% are on the same domain
(a customer of ours).  How large are the mailman batches?  i.e. How many
physical mail messages go out?  Can anybody take a wild guess as to how
long it will take to ship that many messages out?  What if the e-mails
were distributed over 20 domains?  What happens then?

Am I suicidal for even trying to handle lists this large on this size
box, or is this even considered a large list?

Next, my users want the ability to periodically refresh the subscriber
list - they'll actually be coming from an external database.  At the
time of my subscriber refresh, how can I flush any pending messages to
the list - ie, I don't want to get caught where an earlier message is
still being retried when the subscriber list changes.  Is there a safe,
recommended way to handle this?

All communications on this list will really be one-way; we send the
messages out, but nobody can reply (and I realize that some people will
try anyway).

Thanks,
        .../Ed
-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org