>There's nothing wrong with that sequence, other than the delay in getting
>to the  posting. The problem  is that your  machine isn't fast  enough to
>keep up with new mail at the speed  at which it arrives. The jobs are not
>necessarily processed FIFO, which leads  to occasional record delays, but
>the real problem is  that you have a chronical backlog  which is not even
>clearing overnight  (if it had cleared,  the posting would have  been the
>only message left  in the spool and would have  been processed promptly).
>Any mail system that has backlogs that do not clear overnight needs to be
>upgraded as it is underperforming the postal service :-) You should never
>have more than a dozen files  in your spool directory, except following a
>system or network outage, or during  the short bursts of traffic that are
>typical for mail  workloads. If you consistently have  thousands of files
>in your spool directory, your system is underpowered.

Eric, thanks for the thoughts.  I hadn't considered a horsepower problem
because this is a Sun 4/490 that until a year ago had 40-60 users on it,
each running several sessions, doing all sorts of resource-intensive
things.  Presently this machine does practically nothing but relay mail,
and it's hard to believe it wouldn't be powerful enough to handle that.  A
quick check tells me it's running at 15% idle, and there are a few dozen
files in LISTSERV's spool directory.  I expected to see something more like
90% idle, so you may have a point.

I'll do some investigation...  Thanks....

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Laura Toms
UNIX Sytem Administrator and Postmaster
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., Dublin, Ohio
[log in to unmask]
1-800-848-5878 x5016
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