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From: Hugh Messenger
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 20:35:59 -0600 (CST)
Subject: ADMINISTRIVIA - status

Dear Harp-L,

I had to de-install the "bulk_mailer" front end for harp-l distribution
a couple of weeks ago. Although this feature had speeded up delivery
of harp-l mail by about 5 fold, it was gobbling up WAY too much memory.

So ... expect your message to take up to ten hours to be distributed to
the entire list.

For the insatiably curious:

In the raw, a list server is a very simple thing. You post to the list
address, the list server resends your mail to every address on the list.

Without 'bulk_mailer', the algorithm is very simple. The list server
just picks up the list of names, starts at the top and works it's way
through (taking anywhere from 6 to 8 hours to deleiver to all recipients).

With 'bulk_mailer', the subscription list is broken up into smaller
chunks, sorted by domain, and each chunk is run through a seperate
delivery process. This speeds up delivery hugely, but each incarnation
of the delivery process (sendmail) uses up about 1.4Mb of memory.

If a dozen message come in to harp-l in quick succession, there can be
as many as 150 sendmail's running at once. This chews up 100% of the
available memory on our mail server (currently 128Mb real, 192Mb
virtual). This brings all the other tasks that the server is trying to
carry out to a crashing halt.

Once I have split out some of the other services (for instance our ftp
site) to seperate machines, I will be able to re-instate bulk_mailer.

Until then, the list is gonna slow down.

Unless, of course, anyone has a couple of thousand bucks lying aroud
to buy some more memory with ... :)

-- hugh