[Mailman-Users] Large mailing lists

[Brad Knowles]

At 10:46 PM -0500 2005-12-21, Ross Vandegrift wrote:

>  Another question.  Most of the time VirginRunner is at max CPU,
>  sending address removal notifications.  I have already set the lists
>  to zero bounce notifications.  Is there a separate config item for
>  "you have been removed" messages?

	If you split the lists into multiple sublists with a parent 
umbrella list, you should be able to significantly reduce Python 
"pickle" contention when trying to update the mailing list status for 
these removals.  You should be able to process multiple sublists in 
parallel, and you can tune the sublist size for the largest chunks 
which have relatively minimal contention.

	For sites running really large lists but which have otherwise 
applied all the standard performance tuning things within the MTA, I 
think that this is probably one of the biggest additional performance 
enhancement that you can do for Mailman-hosted mailing lists.

>  One propety of these lists is that there is a high incidence of bad
>  addresses - the developer of the web front end refuses to do any kind
>  of validation before they are added to the mailman backend.

	You might want to see if you can get that process improved.  If I 
didn't know better, it would sound to me like you might be running a 
spam house, and I would take a very dim view of that.  If you can 
reduce the amount of garbage going into your system, then you can 
greatly reduce the amount of garbage coming out, and the amount of 
time you spend processing that garbage.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  LOPSA member since December 2005.  See <http://www.lopsa.org/>.