Re: [Exim] bulk_mailer

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Author: Jeffrey Goldberg
Date:  
To: Ian Southam
CC: Andreas Gietl, exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] bulk_mailer
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2000 at 08:10:01PM +0100 Andreas Gietl wrote :
>
> > i need a solution which helps me to send out a lot of emails on a server
> > running the exim MTA. I tried to use the bulk_mailer
> > (ftp://cs.utk.edu/pub/moore/bulk_mailer/)


bulk_mailer (the last time I looked) is a terrible tool which you don't
need with exim (although you do with sendmail). bulk_mailer does not to
proper error checking and you can easily loose mail on certain conditiions
(such as /var/tmp being full).

With exim, just set remote_max_parallel to some number greater than 1. I
use 20 to get the functionality of bulk_mailer. Also, look at remote_sort
as well.

On Tue, 25 Jan 2000, Ian Southam wrote:

> I am not certain you will get a stympathetic response to a "how do I
> bulk mail" question in here!


bulk_mailer has never been used for spamming as far as I know. It is
an addon for older mailing list management systems majordomo 1.* working
with sendmail to break up one sending to many rcpts to several sendings to
fewer. It adds (unless fixed) serious reliability problems, and is
entirely unneeded with exim. I believe that the exim FAQ majordomo
section mentions this.

The name "bulk_mailer" for the tool is unfortunate, but it's been around
since before email spam really became a problem. No one would name it
that now. And there has been some discussion on one of the mailing list
management mailing lists about sites that block mail using bulk_mailer
since they pick up the name in the the headers.

> I can see what is wrong but I would have to ask, why do you want to
> bulk mail?


I assume it is a majordomo admin.

-j
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Jeffrey Goldberg                +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826
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