In article <[log in to unmask]>,
Eric Thomas  <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>On Tue, 29 Mar 1994 11:32:22 -0500 David Barr <[log in to unmask]> said:
>I agree, as long as you include paging/forking in the list of "hoops". In
>my experience, fork() abuse is what brings down most unix mail gateways.
 
True.  There are simple things you can do to avoid this.  (queue
all mail upon receipt, then have a second sendmail process periodically
process the queue rather than have each fork()'d sendmail process
try to individually deliver the mail.)
 
>I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're trying to get at. The total
>delay is on the order of 1-2  seconds on a small VM system, sub-second on
>a  "real" mainframe  (as compared  to having  the data  directly sent  to
>SMTP).
 
<1 to 2 second delays for _each_ message constitutes a significant
amount of overhead.
 
>Most of the system resources are eaten up by SMTP, not LISTSERV or
>MAILER. The  resource costs of the  "transfer" are charged mostly  to the
>sending process, ie  LISTSERV or MAILER. At any rate,  SMTP would have to
>input the message anyway, regardless of where it came from.
 
Correct.
 
However, things could be faster if it were possible to implement
a MAILER+SMTP combo which actually could do all the work required,
rather than passing all messages between (slow) reader spools.
Wasn't it someone on this list who made an observation on how
disk-intensive the process is on CMS?
 
>>As far as Majordomo's speed, Perl is quite fast - it's often compared to
>>C in terms of speed. I'll put it up against VM's Pascal any day.
[I should have added REXX here too]
 
[..]
>than XMAILER.  Obviously, REXX and PASCAL  must be 3 times  faster than C
>and assembler - right? :-)
 
I was simply making the observation that the fact that Majordomo is
written in Perl should be considered a "plus" in terms of estimating
efficiency and speed, rather than a "minus".  (especially since I
hear woes even from you on how bad VM's Pascal is)
 
--Dave
--
"It is not truth, but opinion that can travel the world without
a passport" - Walter Raleigh