I have made  a couple of changes to LISTSERV  that should considerably improve
the performance of  'SIGNOFF *' commands, and should also  improve the overall
performance of the list-handling functions  (basically, anything that needs to
access a lot of list header keywords). The change:
 
- Has 1.6d as a prerequisite.
 
- Introduces 2 new modules (1 REXX + 1 assembler).
 
- Changes LSVKEYWD and LSVDEL, plus a couple other modules/files to ensure the
  new modules are NUCXLOADed/EXECLOADed and to remove obsoleted statements.
 
- Does  not increase  nor  decrease  the amount  of  virtual  storage used  by
  LISTSERV in a significant way.
 
- Burns up one extra  block of disk space per list, regardless  of the size of
  the list.
 
- Should save CPU time and above all disk  I/O in most cases; it is, as usual,
  possible to  imagine cases  where it  would actually cost  CPU and  I/O, but
  these should be very rare cases.
 
I need some help from CPU and/or  I/O constrained sites with a sizeable amount
of lists (especially  large lists) to determine whether the  savings are worth
the extra cost in  disk space (other factors being basically  the same). If it
is indeed  the case,  I could,  at a reasonable  programming cost,  extend the
function to  'DELETE *' commands,  which would then  solve the problem  of the
overhead caused by netwide signoff/delete  jobs. In am particularly interested
in sites  which have statistics  on the  resource consumption of  LISTSERV and
could provide me  with numeric information about the actual  savings. If you'd
like a copy, just drop me a note; you should expect a single CARD deck, as the
changes are relatively small. There's nothing to configure, just STOP, backup,
CARD LOAD and reboot.
 
  Eric