[plug] Sending Mail Messages Individually or in limited numbers.

[Brian Tombleson]

Hello Sendmail Gurus,

As a follow-on to my previous problem, I wonder if anyone knows about a
couple of sendmail options ..

I'm looking for a way to set sendmail to deliver only X (in this case 100)
messages in a transaction, then deliver the next X in a separate
process/connection/transaction.  After reading all the docs on Majordomo
that I could be bothered with and also most of Sendmail (again), I believe
that the issue and the solution is the sendmail config.

I have some possible options, but I'm not 100% sure of the effect of each of
them.

I am using sendmail v8.10.2 Majordomo v1.94.5 on Redhat Linux v6.1 (kernel
2.2.12.20)

Sendmail is running in daemon mode with the command
/usr/sbin/sendmail -bd -q1m

The options in question are :
define(`confMAX_QUEUE_RUN_SIZE',`100')dnl
   [0] If set, limit the maximum size of any
   given queue run to this number of
   entries.  Essentially, this will stop
   reading each queue directory after this
   number of entries are reached; it does
   _not_ pick the highest priority jobs,
   so this should be as large as your
   system can tolerate.  If not set, there
   is no limit.

define(`confSEPARATE_PROC',`true')dnl
   [False] Run all deliveries in a separate process.

define(`confMAX_RCPTS_PER_MESSAGE',`100')dnl
   [infinite] If set, allow no more than
   the specified number of recipients in
   an SMTP envelope.  Further recipients
   receive a 452 error code (i.e., they
   are deferred for the next delivery
   attempt).

I assume this last option is the one the ISP in question has turned on and
set to 100 and is not what I want to set..

Is the confSEPERATE_PROC option the same as setting confMAX_QUEUE_RUN_SIZE
to 1?

Will this do what I'm hoping it will do (by setting the first option) or
will it make a mess of my mail delivery by only sending 100 messages every
queue interval (which I think is 1 min)? - which for a mailing list of 2,500
means a minimum of 25 minutes, not including any over-runs ?  I have another
mailing list due to be running soon with more than 5000 people, so this
becomes a problem at 50+ minutes.

The last thing I would ask (at least, the last thin in this message:) is
does anyone know how to set majordomo's mail priority higher?  It is set by
default to 'bulk', but I can't find the other possible settings?  Anyone
know here a list of valid ones is?

- Brian.