[Mailman-Users] Messages being archived but suddenly stop being sent

[Mark Sapiro]

On 4/8/2010 12:15 AM, Gaël Lams wrote:
> 
> Actually the emails finally went out, it just takes them a few hours
> (probably more last week) to be processed.  Regarding mailman's queue, I
> still have to read the documentation to understand how it works because I
> remember checking this queue but didn't see a lot of files. Is it that, if I
> send an email to a list with 11000 members, only one file is created there?


Yes. There is only one file per post in the out/ queue regardless of the
number of recipients. You can tell when the queue is seriously
backlogged from the 'smtp' log. A "normal" log looks like

Apr 08 07:47:05 2010 (20026) <msg-id> smtp to list for 209 recips,
completed in 4.658 seconds
Apr 08 08:00:03 2010 (20026) <msg-id> smtp to list for 1 recips,
completed in 0.020 seconds
Apr 08 08:00:09 2010 (20026) <msg-id> smtp to list for 1 recips,
completed in 0.018 seconds
Apr 08 08:30:50 2010 (20026) <msg-id> smtp to list for 206 recips,
completed in 4.661 seconds
Apr 08 09:45:13 2010 (20026) <msg-id> smtp to list for 206 recips,
completed in 4.107 seconds
Apr 08 11:06:37 2010 (20026) <msg-id> smtp to list for 209 recips,
completed in 4.489 seconds
Apr 08 11:09:55 2010 (20026) <msg-id> smtp to list for 209 recips,
completed in 4.009 seconds

Note that we are delivering on the order of 45 to 50 recipients per
second (with full Mailman VERP so a separate SMTP transaction per
recipient) and the queue is not backlogged.

With a backlogged queue, each entry has a timestamp which is equal to
the previous entry's timestamp plus this entry's processing time so
there's no idle time between entries.


> As it seems now to be a tuning problem, I started having a look at the
> mailman's wiki page  on performance tuning. Reference is made there to
> QRUNNER_LOCK_LIFETIME, QRUNNER_PROCESS_LIFETIME, and QRUNNER_MAX_MESSAGES. I
> did a grep on my mailman's installation but did not find them (I've mailman
> 2.1.13).


Those were Mailman 2.0.x settings.


> Knowing that I host +/- 50 mailing lists, most of them small
> (3'/40 users) but a few with between 2000 and 11700 users, I'm trying to
> understand what I can do to improve the tuning.
> 
> I will also have a look later at postfix's configuration (I will anyway have
> to do something there because both yahoo and hotmail are slowing us,
> temporarily refusing the connection) but the fact is that these emails I was
> waiting for were not in postfix's queue.


The Postfix tuning FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/rIA9> may help.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan