Re: [exim] queue runner on OS X

On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 4:25 PM, Peter Bowyer <peter@???> wrote:

> Well since you indicated you were running the queue manually once a
> day, I think it was a reasonable assumption that you hadn't found the
> part of the manual that tells you how to get Exim to do that for
> you..... so I pointed you to it.
>
> exim -q1d will emulate your manual queue running.
>
> What 'should' be done depends on your circumstances - what's your
> queueing strategy? What's in the queue? At a guess it probably fills
> up with frozen undeliverable bounces, which don't benefit from a queue
> run at all. You can run the queue at intervals anything from a minute
> to many weeks with that option.
>

A few times per week the server gets a burst of 1000+ outgoing messages in
less than a minute. (They're notifications to (paying!) subscribers of a
newsletter, that a new issue is ready.) I don't understand the behavior very
well, but exim seems to go into a panic mode where all deliveries are
deferred while it tries to sort through this mountain of mail.

However, without a queue runner, they all just sit there in the queue until
I run it manually. Our normal load is perhaps 100-200 outgoing messages per
day, which generally are not queued and just pass through the system very
quickly.

(I saw something the other day about having exim act as a sort of "poor
man's list server", but now I can't find it. It said something about piping
to a file of addresses...? Eh, that's probably best left for another
message, it's off topic for this thread.)

Thanks for the help, Peter. I didn't mean my RTFM comment to sound rude,
earlier.

Seth