[svlug] Fw: MICROSOFT ACQUIRES LINUX OPERATING SYSTEM

[George Bonser]

On Sat, 14 Nov 1998, Rob Walker wrote:

> the reason that this happens is because you are subscriber #202 to the 
> svlug list, and some of those who are prolific posters are listed in
> the first 25.  I have thought about making this kind of dynamic,
> putting the more prolific posters to the top, but have not gotten to
> it yet.
> 
> rob

No, the reason is because of Sendmail. Sendmail processes its queue one
message at a time. If a site is taking a long time to respond, it holds up
all the rest of the mail behind it in the queue. With sendmail, the first
message queued will be the first message sent and it will run  the queue
one message at a time until it is done.

Other mailers such as Exim and qmail are smarter. Exim not being quite as
goofy in its handling of mailboxes and message queues. My system will run
5 queue-runners at the same time and each queue-runned can deliver 6 mails
at once for a total of 30 emails being delivered at any given instant if a
load of mail gets dumped in the queue. It is quite possible to have the
first email still in the process of transacting while the last message is
being sent on its way.

Note that the numbers of queue-runners and simultanious deliveries are
configurable, I had to reduce them from the defaults because of
Linux-2.0.x limits on files/processes.

As much as we all owe sendmail a debt of gratitude, that old workhorse's
time has come and gone. There are much better mailers out there to choose
from now.


George Bonser

The Linux "We're never going out of business" sale at an FTP site near you!


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