On Tue, 21 May 1996, Perrine Crampton wrote:
 
> Gang,
>
> I need some urgent assistance. The eWorld Listserv site is having
> SERIOUS problems and their technical support people can't seem to figure
> out what the problem(s?) is (are?).
[snip]
>
> The thing that really worries me is this line from the show stats:
> "There are 13716 jobs still to be processed and 24 held jobs waiting  to
> be released." =:-O
>
> The complaints are as follows:
>
> 1.  Listserv commands sometimes move through very rapidly, but some posts are
>     arriving days late, others are arriving within a few minutes.
>
> 2.  Postings not making it to the list.
>
> 3.  Listowner Listserv commands never taking place (No rejection, no 'you messed
> up' messages back from Listserv. NOTHING. NADA. ZIP.)
>
> I think we have a SITE-WIDE problem with the eWorld Listserv and/or their
> sendmail software.
[snip the rest of the horror story]
 
I'm extremely new here and very new to LISTSERV specifically but at the risk
of displaying my ignorance for the world to see I seriously doubt this is a
LISTSERV specific problem.  It appears to be a case of the mail actually
being lost.  Whether the mail actually reaches the LISTSERV or not isn't
clear obviously.  This is *probably* not a sendmail problem either unless
it's known that eWorld has upgraded/reinstalled/fidgeted with their sendmail
setup.  I'm guessing this is a hardware problem at eWorld.  Perhaps a router
failure or an overloaded mail gateway.  The complete loss of large chunks of
data (email in this case) sounds like an important part of their
infrastructure has failed.
 
That doesn't solve your problem but I hope the people at eWorld aren't just
sitting around assuming LISTSERV is at fault and waiting for a patch.  Sounds
like they need to be doing some serious network troubleshooting and fixing
the broken pieces.
 
my $0.02 worth (and at 1968 prices that ain't much)
 
Mike Buening
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