[Mailman-Users] Throttling output

[Steve Campbell]

David,

Thanks for the reply.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Stern" <dave at umiacs.umd.edu>
To: "Steve Campbell" <campbell at cnpapers.com>
Cc: <mailman-users at python.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 1:22 PM
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Throttling output


> On Tue, 13 Jun 2006, Steve Campbell wrote:
>
>> Bernd,
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Bernd Petrovitsch" <bernd at firmix.at>
>> To: <mailman-users at python.org>
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 9:17 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Throttling output
>>
>>
>>> On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 09:06 -0400, Steve Campbell wrote:
>>> [...]
>>>> Does anyone have a suggestion for throttling?
>>>
>>> Just store the 22.000 outgoing mails in the mail queue (every decent MTA
>>> should be able to do that unconditionally) and wait for the next queue
>>> run?
>>
>> This originally sounded like a "too-simple-to-work" idea, but after 
>> thinking
>> about it, it may be the best. If you mean QueueGroups with a separate 
>> runner
>> for this particular list, then the milter would handle the throttle of 
>> the
>> runner and relieve Mailman of the outgoing problems. It would really give 
>> me
>> a little more control because of the sleep time of the queue runner along
>> with the milter throttle. This will be a multiple-list server and only 
>> one
>> or two lists would require the slowdown/pacing.
>>
>> Sounds great. In fact, this is sort of what the Milter people suggested
>> without the milter, although I didn't see where the throttling would 
>> occur.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Steve
>>
>
> Actually, that's exactly what we did. We had a tiny sun ultra10 and
> ended up supporting a list of some 12,000 people. Aside from the standard 
> tuning you'll read about in the Sendmail Performance Tuning
> book by Christenson, I set up multiple queues limiting the maxquerunsize.

I am seeing how the MAX_QUEUE_RUN_SIZE thing might work and replace the 
milter. There sure is a lot of sendmail configuration things to discover.

If you don't mind, can you explain some things for me, based on how you did 
this, please? I've been trying to read the Sendmail docs (I really need the 
Cookbook I think), and based on what I see:

1 - I could define the queue groups based on sender address, queueonly 
style, but then all of the queues are queueonly, as this is a 'global' 
option? The Delivery Mode is for all queues, defined once? Not a problem, 
though, as the differing queuerunners would handle the smaller lists just 
fine.
2 - The queuerunners are defined with a specific time interval somewhere in 
the sendmail config file, and Sendmail will run these without startup queue 
scripts? This one is really hazy for me as there are quite a few differing 
topics out there that don't really specify a Sendmail version. It appears 
the queues on 8.12 are quite different from 8.13, based on the facilities 
that Sendmail provides. I have upgraded one server to 8.13 just to see the 
differences.
3 - And finally, the MAX_QUEUE_RUN_SIZE  would only send out whatever it is 
set to until the next queue runner runs? The setting defines how many 
envelopes are processed until the next queue run and this becomes the 
throttle?

Thanks for any help

Steve
>
> 'Course now we're turning to linux and are considering using postfix 
> instead but the theory is the same.
>
>  =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-  generated by /dev/dave -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>  David Stern                                    University of Maryland
>            Institute for Advanced Computer Studies
>
>