Hello Eric,

> >I have noticed that when LISTSERV is processing mail* it sort of "locks"
> >the console... For example ctrl+c does not work.
>
> The console mode is for debugging only! When waiting for you to type your
> command, all  other operations are  suspended. Likewise when  LISTSERV is
> doing something else, it takes note  of the Ctrl-C (in principle, on some
> unixes the signal might not be delivered  when in a socket wait for all I
> know), but will not prompt until the current operation is done.
>
> >Also any mail sent to Listserv is  not answered until all "SMTP to ...."
> >stuff is finished???
>
> LISTSERV answers mail by passing it on to the local MTA via SMTP. If this
> process is a  bottleneck, which is almost always the  case with sendmail,
> LISTSERV cannot answer your requests faster than it is doing it.

Is there any way that it can fork some special (like an admin server) to
handle administrative email, such as those from Postmasters and List
owners, and eventually other commands such as subs and unsubs from users
(even though the later is not priority)?  For example I have find it hard
to run a SCAN for certain users which emails have bounced as unfortunately
sendmail keeps Listserv SMTP channel constantly busy...

I am not sure whether other ppl have experienced this problem but in my
case (and because sendmail *is* in this case the bottleneck) it would be
useful if Listserv has some sort of "admin server" that would "listen" to
admin requests while it does it's other background tasks (in this case
"SMTP to...")  This would ensure that commands sent to Listserv are still
processed promptly while sending list mail.

I am unaware obviously on how hard this would be to actually program but
I think it would be very useful for sites that run large lists (and have
only sendmail.  In any case I still think that even if you run LSMTP to
a certain extent this would be useful too, as eventhough LSMTP is faster
it still has to connect and deliver email).

Regards,

David