On Sat, 18 Nov 1995 23:33:53 EST Roger Fajman <[log in to unmask]> said: >What would be the undesirable side effects? Why don't you take a look at your console logs and see where the bulk of the jobs are coming from :-) >A limit would also catch some of these turkeys who are subscribing to >every list they can find. This is a separate problem that calls for a different solution. For what it's worth, most of these people send a small number of jobs with a large number of requests each. >People here are depending on LISTSERV now to conduct business and this >problem made LISTSERV nearly useless for two days. The problem might >have been detected sooner if we had had more people at work (NIH is >mostly shut down due to the U.S. Government funding fiasco), but the >people who were at work were still depending on LISTSERV for it's normal >functions and to distribute information about the furlough. It failed >miserably. Anyway, it still took over a day to recover after the problem >was discovered, although to be fair, some of that is due to the machine >being overloaded. I was about to say all that... I run LISTSERV.NET and about once every other month I need to do something to prevent some idiot from jamming the system. I would rather it ran on autopilot 100% of the time, but the creativity of said idiots is limitless. Now, if LISTSERV.NET ran on a faster machine (say, a PC), I wouldn't have to worry about that. I could let the problems happen and they'd stop on their own after the idiots' mailboxes filled up. With a PC I'd have enough horsepower that it would take dozens of loops to impact local service. I can't move LISTSERV.NET to a PC at the moment because the software to run a full LISTSERV.NET service is only available on VM currently (there are more urgent things to port), but I'll do it as soon as it becomes possible. Let's face it, if there were a maximum number of incoming files per user and per day, it would have to be in the hundreds, and of course the net effect would be the same as a SERVE OFF. You said it took one day for the situation to clear up after you served off the user. So, I don't see that this would have suppressed the problem, it would just have made it less dramatic. Eric