Re: [cobalt-developers] Majordomo & capacity

["Steve Werby" <steve-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Jeff Lasman" <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Per Arne Ensby wrote:
>
> > Does anyone have experience with large lists using Majordomo?
> > Large as in 100000 members? Is there any known limitations to
> > the number of members to a list?

There's no hard limit on the number of list members, but Majordomo doesn't
scale well and more info. would be necessary to give you a better response.
Please share any info. (estimates are fine) about the % of members whose
email would be hosted on the same server as Majordomo, the total # of
external domains the rest of the users belong to and the number of messages
expected to be posted each day.

> We have experience up to about 10,000, and delivery is slow under the
> best of cases.  There's a product you can use with Majordomo, called
> "bulk_mailer" (or something like that) that sorts outgoing mail by
> domain name, so you end up sending less discrete emails; it speeds
> things up quite a bit.

bulk_mailer, tlb and a few others.  With large lists such programs can
greatly increase performance.  And some MTAs and mailing list software
programs have that functionality built in.  Not Majordomo and not sendmail,
though.

> But Majordomo is NOT designed for lists this large; there are better
> choices; since this is NOT a cobalt-specific issue you my write me
> offlist to continue this correspondence.

If this isn't Cobalt specific and of interest to other Cobalt users I don't
know what is.  I have to assume the original poster is planning on hosting
the list on a Cobalt server and not enough information has been shared to
rule out Majordomo or another MLM installed on a Cobalt server.

> (And, just for general knowledge, you're going to need very specialized
> hardware for decent results with large lists; certainly Sun Cobalt RaQs
> and Qubes are NOT designed for optimized bulk email sending.)

I don't quite agree.  I agree that more RAM and a faster processor will
help, but there is software that can be installed and optimized on Cobalt
servers that will perform much better than Majordomo by itself on a virgin
RaQ.  A lot depends on the list (monthly broadcast or high volume
discussion?  all users within the same company or 100,000 different domains?
etc...).  And of course, it depends on what else the box is being used for
too.

--
Steve Werby
President, Befriend Internet Services LLC
http://www.befriend.com/