[plug] This Mailing list: was SendMail slow?

[Leon Brooks]

>> Leon Brooks wrote:
>>> The decrease in lag is staggering; about 20 seconds vs
>>> some-minutes-to-some-hours!

> Somebody else wrote:
>> I noticed that too.  It seems that the MTA now used by the
>> mailing list server is Postfix rather than sendmail and I have
>> a feeling that this may be responsible for the increase in speed.

John Summerfield wrote:
> Highly improbable; if sendmail were that bad, nobody at all would
> use it. However, sendmail is, if not the most-used MTA, then close
> to it. Plug's list is hardly a high-activity one.

> Matt's remarks regarding differences between procmail and smartlist,
> if accurate, constitute a much more satisfying explanation: mailing
> one by one could indeed take quite a while.

Having installed and used MajorDomo on a PostFix system, I have
to agree with John: the major slowth is in MajorDomo.

Having said that, PostFix is smaller, lower CPU impact, and in
principle less susceptible to root rorts. It was unquestionably
easier for me to configure than sendmail but I'm sure there are
circumstances where sendmail's added flexibility (the upside of
its complexity) would make it the obvious choice.

Having said both of those, either of them not only run, but dance
and skip rings around Exchange, in terms of resource useage,
speed, security and standards adherence. I can't imagine what
Microsoft did to Domino to make it appear slower than Exchange,
but it must have been drastic. I wouldn't put anything past them
after seeing them fudge benchmarks against *themselves*!

-- 
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If at first you don't succeed, try a shorter bungee. When in trouble,
when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. The two great secrets
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