On Oct 19, 2011, at 6:32 PM, Jacob Haller wrote:

>Generally how LISTSERV delivers mail is by creating .mail files in ~listserv/spool/.  Then the SMTP workers (if SMTP_FORWARD_1 is configured) or the main LISTSERV process (if not) read the .mail >files and deliver them to the outgoing mail server.

>It sounds like LISTSERV was creating a separate .mail file for each recipient, which happens for mail merge messages (since each recipient gets a slightly different copy of the message), or if >MAXBSMTP is set to 1 in LISTSERV's configuration, or under a couple of other sort of specialized situations.

>To prevent the sort of situation you describe, I would probably impose a limit on the size of messages, either using 'SizeLim=' settings on individual mailing lists or by setting a global limit via >FILEMAXL.

Hmm. I'm pretty sure this wasn't a mail merge. I don't think we ever turned on embedded mail merge (although perhaps it's on by default), and the list definitely doesn't have a mail-merge keyword. The log shows a standard mail message being processed. The only difference in the message files (I did a diff) was the "to" line (or whatever it is in pure SMTP). They looked like:

owner-listname*person**1SMARKETING*[log in to unmask]

Which is why I assumed the problem might be with the auto-probe setting.

I haven't touched MAXBSMTP, so it should be whatever the default is. 

I'm going to be having a chat with the list owner about switching from PDF to HTML for her newsletters, but I'd like to know whether I need to look at increasing MAXBSTMP or if there is something else I can do to prevent this from happening in the future.

Melissa Wauford
Systems Administrator, Office of Information Technology
IT Systems: Communications & Collaboration
The University of Tennessee

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