Elena Fraboschi <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Dear all:  I just installed ListServ Lite Edition two days ago
>(on a SparcStation 5 running SOlaris 8), and all is well except...

From what you describe, you're beginning to see some of the basic problems
typical of mail servers hosting mailing lists.

There are several solutions to these variety of problems, and I'll only
touch on a few of the possibilities.

Queue runs:
  o You could install the latest sendmail and enable the
    multi-queue-directories option,
  o You could use the re_queue scripts to implement length-of-message-delay
    based queues (if it's been in the queue for more than 1 hour, move it
    off to a 4-hr queue, etc)
  o Install another mailer and have a whole other set of "learning
    opportunities" :)

If you just want multiple processes scanning the queue and attempting to
send, just start one or more:
  /usr/lib/sendmail -q15m

[where the "15m" is selectable by you, and you'll have to decide how many
based on available memory/etc to start at once.]  Be sure to use sendmail's
-qxxx options rather than cron-ing a single queue-run, otherwise you can
get into the 'wrapping' queue-run processes that keep increasing in number
if the previous does not finish before the next one starts.  Using the
QueueSortOrder=host option can help too.


For delivery attempts, I must admit that I drop connection-time limits down
fairly severly (like helo/initial/connect/etc to 1m).  I've never had a
reported problem that delivering to a site was taking longer than that
given modern connections.  If you want to limit the number of days a
message will stay in your queue attempting to be delivered to a site, you
can do that by decreasing Timeout.queuereturn down from the default 3 or 4
days, but I keep mine set at 3 days.


There are so many things you can tune for your systems and your audience,
but your best bet is to go get one of the following:

  o Your vendor documentation if you're not using the sendmail.org version
  o The <http://www.sendmail.org/> site with it's multitude of information
  o The cf/README file for configuration operations if you use the
    sendmail.org version
  o The doc/op/op* file(s) if you're using the sendmail.org version


-philip

--
Philip Kizer,
USENIX Liaison to Texas A&M University       <[log in to unmask]>
Texas A&M CIS Operating Systems Group, Unix <[log in to unmask]>