This is not the problem I'm having. Let me try to illustrate. The is for
ListServ 1.8b on AIX.
 
ListServ is connected to sendmail to send message from lists and
distributions. When an address is passed to sendmail, sendmail does a DNS
lookup to get the MX record for that e-mail address, like AOL.COM.
 
Now, suppose that you are disconnected from the rest of the InterNet, case
in point our provider's router died. Now, sendmail still tries to do the
DNS lookup, but it now times out after 30 seconds. If you have a list with
many recipients, these 30 seconds add up for each timedout DNS lookup.
 
People at our site, however, can still send to the ListServ lists because
all of our DNS servers are working and since we're all on the same campus,
there's no need to go outside of our domain to get a DNS answer. So,
people can still send mail to lists to get distributed, but because of the
DNS problems, the jobs get backlogged in the spool directory.
 
What I'm asking for, and it doesn't seem to be a big deal as it's already
implemented for the lcmd jobs, is that there be a flag for lsv_amin, which
is in the list alias in /etc/aliases, which would give the job a high
priority in the spool directory. As for lcmd jobs, there could be another
character with which the filenames start to signify a job which should be
handled right away. For example, now, incoming e-mail jobs start with 'in'
and lcmd jobs start with 'j'. Why not have another type beginning with 'e'
(for example) which means 'do this one next.' As I understand it, ListServ
scans the directory before every job to see what it has to work with, so
it should pick up the 'e' jobs right away.
 
So, I ask can this be done? And if so, could it be put into 1.8c? Any
official word from Eric? :-)
 
On Wed, 25 Sep 1996, Paul Graham wrote:
 
> i run things like this every minute to expedite certain traffic:
>
> sendmail -q -qSLISTSERV -OMinQueueAge=5m > /dev/null 2>&1 &
>
> something similar may be appropriate assuming sendmail is working (which
> you imply may not have been the case).
>
> -------- In reply to:
> What about for Unix ListServ? ANy chance there? We have a few important
> lists here.
 
Bob Jackiewicz            UIC Academic Computer Center           [log in to unmask]
University of Illinois at Chicago                            Network Services