Delivery Method.

[Julian Field]

Kelly,

At 20:25 24/01/2002, you wrote:
>I had about 900 messages in my mqueue.in dir, i was starting to panic, this
>is the first day in a live prodcution enviroment. Im running spamassassin
>2.0 with this also. Are you using spamassasin?
>i restarted with QUEUE to see if it works better than batch

Try
1) Using "batch" but setting "deliver in background = yes".
2) Try switching off SpamAssassin, I'm not sure how much extra load it adds.
3) Try leaving on SpamAssassin, but setting its "skip_rbl_checks" to
true/yes in /.spamassassin/user_prefs (in SA 2.0).

I haven't tried running SpamAssassin on a server with a volume as high as
75k per day, it might be adding too much load. Try each of the above 3
suggestions in turn, keeping an eye on the load and queue length with each
change.

I would be interested to hear your results.

You shouldn't need "-q1m" together with "batch", something like "-q15m"
should do fine. "batch" mode makes sendmail do 1 delivery attempt
immediately on each message anyway, and adding queue runs every 1 minute
will only push the load up without actually achieving very much. I would
only try frequent queue runs with "delivery mode = queue", not with
"batch". Don't bother with "individual", it's mainly there for backwards
compatibility (it's the first mode I implemented and I didn't see any point
removing it for the sake of it).

Also read the Installation FAQ for a note or two on high-volume servers.

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Miguel Koren O'Brien de Lacy" <miguelk at KONSULTEX.COM.BR>
>To: <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
>Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2002 3:13 PM
>Subject: Re: Delivery Method.
>
>
> > Kelly;
> >
> > This was a concern of mine when I first instaled Mail Scanner (about 3
> > months ago) and I set it up like this (not a 'high' volume site though):
> >
> > - delivery method = queue
> >
> > - starting Mail Scanner:
> >
> > /usr/sbin/sendmail -bd -ODeliveryMode=queueonly
> > -OQueueDirectory=/var/spool/mqueue.in
> > /usr/sbin/sendmail -q1m
> >
> > This has worked very well for me and I never see anything queued up nor
>any
> > appreciable delay (not anything that anyone compains about).
> >
> > But I am interested in other people's opinion if this is the way to go for
> > high throughput.
> >
> > Miguel
> >
> > Kelly Hamlin wrote:
> >
> > > Just curious what you guys with higher volumn mail servers use for that
> > > option. I currently have it set to batch, and my mqueue.in folder is
> > > starting to backup a bit.
> > > We do around 75k mail a day on this server, thanks.
> > > Ive also set sendmail -q1m
> > >
> > >                   //////
> > >                 ( o o )
> > > +--.oooO--(_)--Oooo.-----------------+
> > > | [Kelly Hamlin]
> > > | kellyh at cyberstreet.com
> > > | http://www.bomb.net
> > > |   .oooO
> > > |      (  )    Oooo.
> > > +--- \  (----(   )----------------------------+
> > >           \_)    ) /
> > >                 (_/
> >

--
Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
                             Southampton SO17 1BJ