[Mailman-Users] Giant lists

[Brad Knowles]

At 12:15 PM -0700 2005-02-24, Tyler Strickland wrote:

>  I'm sorry Cabel, but I'm going to have to take away your 'largest list'
>  title.  The AdoptionWeek E-Magazine, currently run with MailMain,
>  sendmail, and the MySQL MailmanMemberships patch
>  (http://kyrian.ore.org/MailmanMysql/) currently serves 124,329 members.
>  This is a one-message-per-week list with _very_ tight restrictions on
>  who can send out, so our load is probably lower than comparable
>  discussion lists.

	I'll update the FAQ.  Thanks!

>  The list was originally converted to Mailman about a year ago by a
>  different admin, so I'm not too familiar with how it was initially
>  set up.  I do eventually hope to upgrade the server from Solaris an
>  old Sun 250 to Linux on something modern, though, and when that time
>  comes I'm sure I'll be a _very_ active member of the list.

	A Sun E250 is getting pretty old in the tooth by now.  A fast 
Intel-based box would likely be a good candidate for a replacement, 
but keep in mind that your primary limiting factors on a system like 
this are going to be the quantity of RAM that you can stuff into the 
box, and the speed/latency of the underlying disk subsystem, etc....

	Personally, Linux would not be my first choice -- I'd go with 
FreeBSD instead.

>  Right now it's taking us roughly 2-3 days to send out a single message to
>  our whole list, so if anyone has any sendmail performance tips, I'd be
>  glad to hear them.  I'm more of a postfix guy, myself, so sendmail is a
>  whole new world for me.

	I've tried to encode the majority of my sendmail performance 
tuning tips at 
<http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq06.003.htp>, 
most of which comes down to "buy the book by Nick Christenson".  My 
own sendmail performance tuning slides pre-date the ones that Nick 
put together, but I was a technical reviewer for the book, and the 
book is definitely better than either of the sets of slides.

-- 
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

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.