The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Dan Pritts <address@concealed>]

On Feb 25, 2011, at 12:07 AM, Jaques Cochet wrote:
> I'm currently running ezmlm/mysql with qmail. My problem is that I
> manage some 2000 mail lists that I have to create then delete every
> six months. Ezmlm creates several tables per mail lists and this
> leaves me with something like 25000 tables, it seems strange as a data
> model and backup becomes rather difficult. How does sympa handle this
> kind of environment?  
 
you will be OK.  

your database will be sane.  There is a data model document on the sympa.org 
site somewhere but it's 11 tables.  

I'm no DB expert, but I have noticed some places where the schema could 
probably be optimized for better performance.  that said, on modern hardware 
it's fine. sympa's perl code uses a lot more CPU than the db does.  

there is a per-list directory in the filesystem that contains config files.  
Sometimes they all have to be re-read, which can be slow; however, the 
developers have improved this with caching and with 2000 lists on reasonable 
hardware you will be fine.    I have 500 lists and a 4-core 2.5GHz xeon, and 
SATA disks,  and it is fine.  With an old sympa version on a dual p3, scsi, 
and about 1000 lists i would frequently have the CGI time out as it had to 
parse all the list configs.  

danno
--
Dan Pritts, Sr. Systems Engineer
Internet2
office: +1-734-352-4953 | mobile: +1-734-834-7224