Here is the result of last night's killing of a message.

While the server was still running, just not connected to the T-1 line, I
opened the mqueue in sendmail and removed all circumstances (3) of the
offending email.  This is not an easy task, especially identifying which
ones needed to be deleted.  Then I opened the log file for the list and
removed the entry for the email, leaving no trace that it ever even existed.

Before they were able to pull the cord the email had gone out to
approximately 11,600 subscribers.  I guess it took them time to get from
where the accidental mailing had occurred to the next floor down and into a
secure server room to pull the plug.  That's out of a total list of 84,000.
Moves pretty fast I guess.  Faster than I remembered.  Still it only got to
the A's and not all of them!

In my weakened state, it took me a while to get on top of it, but it worked.
When I hooked it back up to the internet, it had already stopped sending it
out and did not request (its a list that requires confirmation, no less) to
be sent out again.

If I ever need to free this list, will it start all over again?  Your guess
is as good as mine!  But I hope I terminated it with prejudice!!!

Thanks to all who responded so quickly.  The second mailing went out without
a hitch!

Margaret J. Brandt
MMS/NEJM
Technology Projects Coordinator
[log in to unmask]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stan Horwitz" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 4:44 PM
Subject: Re: How do you recall/kill a mesasge?


> On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Kevin Parris wrote:
>
> > It's entirely possible they missed it - if the time elapsed from
> > approving to cord-pulling was very long at all, distribution of the
> > message may have been done already (at least on my WinNT based setup,
> > things happen in mere seconds).  But in any case, since they didn't
> > (apparently) stop the LISTSERV process, you're not likely to find it
> > in there, but rather in the queues for the SMTP mailer package used
> > for actual outgoing message delivery.
>
> I would like to hear how this situation turns out, but I agree that the
> message in question was probably distributed before that system was taken
> off its network. If it wasn't distributed, it opens up the question of why
> because in my experience, once Listserv gets a message to be distributed
> to a list, it usually processes within a few seconds at most and than out
> it goes via the smtp port.
>