Re: [Exim] spool file locked for LONG times...

On Tue, Jan 11, 2000 at 02:29:51PM +0200 roger shannon wrote :

> > Exim does all the routing before it does any actual
> > deliveries. Consequently, if it's a long list and there are DNS delays,
> > it could hold it up a while, but that doesn't make sense if other
> > messages to the same list go through.
>
> This might be it then, exiwhat showed the process to be stuck on the same
> address for a long time. I'll do some more debugging and get to the root
> of it.

Hello,

I have seen this exact behaviour just last weekend. An address on a mailing
list was failing - not with DNS but, because the SMTP server in question
was down. However the
site in question had 6 SMTP servers and, exim would sit and try each server
and fail, each time a message to the list was posted (tis a fairly busy list).

As a consequence, there were over 100 messages to this list stuck on the
queue and each new message would start the process again. I unsubscribed the
user in question and forced the queue and the whole lot was gone in about 30
seconds.

It would be nicer, if there was someway to get exim to process the whole list
as a number of processes so, that one duff address doesn't hold the whole
thing up.

Truth is though, we are probably better looking at more specialised list
handling software (like Sympa) because at the end of the day, exim is an MTA
(and a darned good one) and not a list manager.

--
Ian