The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Serge Aumont <address@concealed>]

Micah Anderson a écrit :
> I'm actually looking to do the opposite of what was originally posted on
> this thread.
>
> In our setup, we have a few lists with a very large number of
> subscribers. When a post is sent to one of these lists, any other
> sympa processing is blocked until it completes delivery to the MTA (in
> our case, postfix). On the below example, there are almost 60k
> subscribers, and the hand-off from sympa to postfix takes 2843 seconds
> (about 47 minutes):
>
> If I am correct, what this means is that for 40 minutes there are no
> other sympa operations, so all other messages that are in the queue,
> or that arrive in the queue during this period are blocked by this
> process.
>   

Sympa.conf distribution_mode fork option will make sympa fork, one process analyse incomming messages forward messages to editor, answers to command message etc. The second distribute message. It better but only one message distribution process is running at time. 


> Why does it take so long, and how can I either speed up this process
> or parallelize it?
>
> I have increased sympa.conf's maxsmtp 200 from 100 (as well as
> postfix's smtp process limits), but that didn't change anything in the
> times.
>   
The requested delay is comming from the number of system call to 
sendmail or postfix. maxsmtp if the maximum number of  "sendmail" 
processus called by sympa.pl. Increase this number will make 
distribution faster only if many of thoses processus stay a lot of time 
in the machine. This is possible when using sendmail and when thoses 
processus are managing very slow smtp sessions. In your case (postfix) 
the maxsmtp parameter is not the problem because postfix just queue 
messages and finish very fast.
You should increase nrcpt parameter. nrcpt is the number of recipient as 
argument of each sendmail/postfix call. The number of processus that 
sympa have to run is #subscribers divided by nrcpt . (if you don't use 
verp).
Sendmail as a limit for that parameter. If you put a hight value for it 
each process become too complex and slow. Postfix is better for that so 
you may increase it. Let's say from 25 to 100 or more.
Is there some postfix guru that can confirm the value we can use with 
postfix ?

We did a major change in Sympa bulk mailer this summer. Next Sympa 
version 6.0 will parallelize this process and it will be possible to 
start a new message distribution for a hight priority list even if so 
hugue distribution process is started.

Let us known if nrcpt change is a good solution for you.
Regards
Serge