[Mailman-Users] huge delays in email posts?

[Drew Tenenholz]

Mike --

Receiving mail to the server and the server sending the mail are 
independent actions.  So it it certainly possible for inbound 
messages to arrive just fine while outbound traffic is very slow.

Each of your outbound messages has to have the domain translated into 
numbers  (e.g. *@python.org goes to mail.python.org which is 
194.109.207.14).  If your server cannot do this translation for 
itself (i.e. is a DNS server as well as a Mailman server), then it 
has to ask an assigned DNS server for the translation.  If this Plesk 
server's settings are not well-formed, then it may take a long time 
for each message to get the translation done, resulting in outbound 
delays for all messages.  That's what happened to us.

Our Majordomo server had been doing it's own DNS, then someone turned 
it off without really directing it to use a different DNS server.  So 
it sort of hunted around for an available DNS server somewhere in the 
world for EACH outbound message.  Once the sysadmin tracked down what 
was happening and reinstated the server's own DNS resolution, 
everything returned to normal speed.

HTH,
Drew Tenenholz


>Hi Drew,
>
>Thanks for getting back to me.  Would it matter that messages making 
>it to the mailman Plesk server are getting there just fine very 
>fast? In other words, sending email to the domain seems fine, it 
>just routing it back out to members is what is taking so long.
>
>Mike D.
>
>>Mike --
>>
>>You might want to look into how the DNS resolution is being done 
>>for this server.  We're just getting started with mailman, but saw 
>>major delays with our much larger (38,000 subscriber) majordomo 
>>list when DNS resolution was turned off on the server and all DNS 
>>queries were rerouted to an outside DNS server.
>>
>>Things that had taken minutes started taking several hoursor even a 
>>day to complete, just like you.  Since the moderators of the list 
>>have all signed contracts to deal with posts within 4 hours, they 
>>were understandably upset over the delays.
>>
>>HTH,
>>Drew Tenenholz
>
>--
>Take care,
>Mike D.
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