[volunteers] Monitoring SVLUG Processes

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Mark Weisler (mark at weisler-saratoga-ca.us):

> I was thinking of something very simple and unobtrusive. Some solution  
> that does not require much in resource to run.

Well, it can be something as simple as an external (running-elsewhere)
cronjob that, once an hour, opens a telnet connection to port 25 (SMTP)
on lists.svlug.org and attempts to deliver a canned message to
svlug-request at lists.svlug.org with subject "help".  If it's able to get
all the way through to "250 Accept" (or whatever it is), that's a really
good sign:  That prove's exim's receiving mail.  You could in theory
have another process that checks for getting back the canned Mailman
help text at the first cronjob's sending address.  That proves that
Mailman's running and that exim's sending outbound mail correctly.  

The jobs would have to error-trap for failures and notify somebody.

Anyhow, I think current signs are that the performance tuning I did last
night was a really good idea:  I've just received copies of the mailing
list rosters in a timely fashion (from the Sunday cronjob) for the first
time in weeks.