>  I have  a question  on another topic  that we are  trying to  solve. I
>wonder if anyone could give me  a quick tutorial on how listserv handles
>memeory. That  is to  say, does  listserv require  a specific  amount of
>'real memory' or  can listserv (1.8a running on Unix  IRIX 5.2) make use
>of swapping  on disk.  The reason  I ask is  because Listserv  seemed to
>freeze about 1:30 pm today and spooled incoming mail for a few hours. At
>first we  thought it  may have  crashed, but it  did not.  (...) Another
>related question. It seems to me  that when listserv processes a request
>locally,  once  listserv  hands  over  the job  to  sendmail  for  local
>distribution, listserv  has nothing more  to do with those  specific job
>requests, is  that correct? One  system administrator here told  me that
>listserv was slow  or froze because our  main node was down  so mail was
>queued and re-processed every 15 minutes.
 
LISTSERV can  be swapped out  like any normal  process. Most of  the time
LISTSERV  slowdowns are  caused by  sendmail slowdowns.  LISTSERV has  to
deliver the outgoing mail to sendmail and if for any reason sendmail gets
slow, LISTSERV gets  slow as well. In  your case the problem  is that you
are running an old version of sendmail. Prior to 8.6, sendmail took about
2-3 seconds per  recipient just to add  the message to the  queue. So you
should  be sure  to  run sendmail  8.6,  and  to get  8.6.10  to fix  the
umpteenth security hole  letting anyone gain root access  on your machine
(why  sendmail needs  to run  as root  other than  for local  delivery is
beyond my understanding).
 
  Eric