Re: Unreliable Lua mailing list delivery

[Daniel Silverstone <dsilvers@...>]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 04:08:27PM +0100, Mike Pall wrote:
> Apparently flounder.pepperfish.net is running Exim on Debian.
> Alas, the standard configuration is absolutely not suitable to run
> a mailing list of this size. Unless the limits have been tweaked
> and the worker processes have been scaled up, it's going to end up
> with tons of undeliverable, delayed or frozen messages in
> /var/spool/exim. Since every queue runner has to traverse them
> all, you end up with an O(n^2) scaling problem which brings down
> the best server. Maybe the admins want to take a look at that.]

The machine isn't running a stock Exim package, and is running with severely
custom configuration, both in terms of mailman and of exim itself.  It's
possible we've not yet hit the sweet-spot for a list of this complexity, and
suggestions/hints would be gratefully received.

We have isolated a number of "trouble" domains, which seem to take a very long
time to get deliveries to, but for the most part things look okay from our end
and deliveries seem to be happening in a reasonably timely fashion for most
people.

Indeed, so far as I can tell, lua-l causes us less trouble than our usual spam
load.  I am obviously missing something if there are people who are
experiencing this kind of delay.  I shall look into it.

I can only apologise for the issues, and ask that anyone experiencing problems
drop me a mail at dsilvers@pepperfish.net detailing the address you are
subscribed via, and any concrete examples of issues you've been having, ideally
along with message IDs.

Regards,

Daniel.

-- 
Daniel Silverstone                         http://www.digital-scurf.org/
PGP mail accepted and encouraged.            Key Id: 3CCE BABE 206C 3B69