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

[Anthony J. Breeds-Taurima]

On Sun, 8 Apr 2001, Brian Tombleson wrote:

> Hello Sendmail Gurus,

In the absence of any I'll have another whack.

> 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.

Yup thats what I looked for for you before.

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

<snip>

> 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..

It would seem to me setting the same option to 100 (or 99 maybe) might
accomplish the same thing.

Unfortunately that option is new in 8.10 and not covered in the bat :(

I think you would do well to look at this.

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

I don't think so.  confSEPARATE_PROC tells sendmail to run each queue item in
a separate process this has a rather unfortunate side effect that MTA errors
to a given site must be rechecked for each messages to that site.

ie if mail to abc at xyz fails because the mail server is down then the next
message to def at xyz will result in another lookup only to find that xyz is down

If you leave confSEPARATE_PROC at its default then sendmail wont even try to
send messages to xyz after the first one fails, if the server is down or the
like.

Setting  confMAX_QUEUE_RUN_SIZE tells Sendmail that when you are running the
queue only process N messages before waiting another wait period.

I'm not certain that I'm explain this very well.

> 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

look at the -Q parameter for sendmail ... if you are running RedHat
look at /etc/sysconfig/sendmail.

Also messages only get placed in the queue if the fail delivery (as opposed to
not fitting in the envelope).

> 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.

I'd have reservations about setting up lists of this size with Majordomo.
(I don't have any suggestions tho.)

I'd seriously suggest you use a dedicated box and taylor your MTA to suit.

In terms of your question don't forget that sendmail will only (by default)
collate messages from a single source destined for a singular mail
host it will also parallelize outgoing connection to the best of its ability.
meaning that users that share a common domain with lots of other users will be
penalized.  Add to that the Majordomo parses it's list sequentially people at
the bottom will get the worst service.

You may also want to consider the bandwidth into your timing.

5000 people isn't that bad if there are only 10 messages a day.  more than
that you may really need to consider your connection methodology.

do you NEED to use the Telstra mailhost or can you bypass it ???
Can you physically service the volume you are talking about.


I may be waaay of base here as I don't know anything about your setup
size, connection speed, purpose etc etc.  I'm only trying to give you
stuff to think about .... don't shoot me :)

> 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?

special delivery, first-class, list, bulk, junk

If you have a dedicated list server then altering the priority wont help you.
If you are sahring the mail server with other users then consider what effect
this will have on them.


I'd suggest that if you're going to use sendmail for you MTA then get the bat
it will explain things to you that you can't get from the 'net without LOTS
of digging.
>
> - Brian.
>
>
>
>
>


Yours Tony.

/*
 * "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the
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