headers
Ralf Hildebrandt | 1 Jun 2011 09:18
Picon
Favicon

Re: reboot servers

* Khalil Abbas <khillo100 <at> hotmail.com>:
> hi, 
> 
> I have several vps servers with very limited resources running several large mailman lists, n these
servers keep stopping from responding n sometimes mailq shows several errors like: too many open files in
the system and not enough resourses ... etc.
> 
> so every hour I do the following:
> 
> mailmanctl stop
> postfix stop
> reboot
> 
> to free up the system resources, and eventually the mailq shows empty n the mail gets delivered..
> 
> is that a good thing I’m doing? for I can’t afford to upgrade the hardware, is there a better solution?
is there any side effects??

It would be better to lower the default_process_limit in postfix

postconf -e "default_process_limit = 5"
postfix reload

--

-- 
Ralf Hildebrandt
  Geschäftsbereich IT | Abteilung Netzwerk
  Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
  Campus Benjamin Franklin
  Hindenburgdamm 30 | D-12203 Berlin
  Tel. +49 30 450 570 155 | Fax: +49 30 450 570 962
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Khalil Abbas | 1 Jun 2011 10:24
Picon
Favicon

Re: reboot servers

mmmmm.. what if I did this:

create small lists instead of large ones, then schedule the same message to 
be sent every hour to a different list ? this way the servers will not 
halt..

what do u think?

-----Original Message----- 
From: Mark Sapiro
Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2011 1:58 AM
To: Khalil Abbas
Cc: mailman-users <at> python.org
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] reboot servers

On 5/31/2011 3:39 PM, Khalil Abbas wrote:
> well thanks for the tip, but I'm sorry I didn't get it .. is it a good
> thing to stop mailman and postfix and reboot the servers every hour to
> free up recourses n start over?

"You can't fit ten pounds of mud in a five pound sack." I.e., you are
trying to do too much with too little. If you can't get more hardware or
reduce the size of or maybe the number of posts to your lists, you will
have problems. What you are doing is not good, but if you think it
allows you to avoid the real solution, you can keep doing it.

You are the only one who can determine if what you are doing is causing
lost and/or duplicated messages or perhaps other problems.

--

--
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 2 comments |
headers
Mollatt Ntini | 1 Jun 2011 12:31
Favicon

Re: reboot servers


On 6/1/2011 10:24 AM, Khalil Abbas wrote:
> mmmmm.. what if I did this:
>
> create small lists instead of large ones, then schedule the same 
> message to be sent every hour to a different list ? this way the 
> servers will not halt..
>
> what do u think?

I think Ralf is right. Lower the process limit, else your load will stay 
on high and you may lose or end up having duplicated messages. Maybe 
other problems too.

Think about it.

Molla.
Permalink | Reply | 1 comment |
headers
Geoff Shang | 1 Jun 2011 13:04

Re: reboot servers

On Tue, 31 May 2011, Khalil Abbas wrote:

> I have several vps servers with very limited resources running several 
> large mailman lists, n these servers keep stopping from responding n 
> sometimes mailq shows several errors like: too many open files in the 
> system and not enough resourses ... etc.

How limited are these servers?  How big are these lists?

Geoff.
Permalink | Reply | 6 comments |
headers
Andrew Hodgson | 1 Jun 2011 10:56

Setting options via email - confirmation rather than password?

Hi,

Is there any way in Mailman to allow the users to set options (usually nomail style options) without the
password argument?  The system would then send out a confirmation email which the user could reply or click
a link in the email to confirm.  

We have a lot of users who subscribe by sending to list-subscribe <at> domain.com and replying to the
confirmation mail, they don't go near the web interface :)

Thanks.
Andrew.
Permalink | Reply | 2 comments |
headers
William Ashworth | 1 Jun 2011 06:44
Gravatar

PHP front-end for Mailman?

I've searched for a bit and perhaps nothing is available (or I'm typing the wrong searches).

A client of mine is looking to integrate more tightly to their Mailman list. There's an archive page, but
we're trying to format it nicely for inclusion on their website so that it matches for members to see. I can
see two possibilities right now...

1.  We write a custom PHP application to scrape and store the archive pages into a database to call later,
however we want.

2.  We create an email address and subscribe it to the list. Any new messages will be checked via a PHP script we
build and stored in the database, then we'll pull from our own archive format however we choose.

The only problem with #2 is that we lose 8 years of legacy emails that are already present in the archives. My
best bet is to find some way to hook into the archives with PHP so that we can roll it into the rest of their
complicated website. Looking at another development language other than PHP at this time would be a
conflict of interest with the rest of their website applications.

I may be dreaming, but if there's some way to nightly export the data to XML from the archive or something,
which we can then (also) nightly import that XML data into a MySQL database, then the sky's the limit...I
simply don't know if there's a standardized way to access the archived information, as scraping is very messy.

I'm completely new to Mailman. Any assistance you can offer to help get my bearings straight would be
greatly appreciated.
Permalink | Reply | 6 comments |
headers
Mailman Admin | 1 Jun 2011 16:29
Picon
Favicon

Re: PHP front-end for Mailman?

Hi William Ashworth

On 06/01/2011 06:44 AM, William Ashworth wrote:
> I've searched for a bit and perhaps nothing is available (or I'm
> typing the wrong searches).
> 
> A client of mine is looking to integrate more tightly to their
> Mailman list. There's an archive page, but we're trying to format it
> nicely for inclusion on their website so that it matches for members
> to see. I can see two possibilities right now...
> 
> 1.  We write a custom PHP application to scrape and store the archive
> pages into a database to call later, however we want.
> 
> 2.  We create an email address and subscribe it to the list. Any new
> messages will be checked via a PHP script we build and stored in the
> database, then we'll pull from our own archive format however we
> choose.
> 
> The only problem with #2 is that we lose 8 years of legacy emails
> that are already present in the archives. My best bet is to find some
> way to hook into the archives with PHP so that we can roll it into
> the rest of their complicated website. Looking at another development
> language other than PHP at this time would be a conflict of interest
> with the rest of their website applications.
> 
> I may be dreaming, but if there's some way to nightly export the data
> to XML from the archive or something, which we can then (also)
> nightly import that XML data into a MySQL database, then the sky's
> the limit...I simply don't know if there's a standardized way to
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Geoff Shang | 1 Jun 2011 16:36

Re: PHP front-end for Mailman?

On Wed, 1 Jun 2011, William Ashworth wrote:

> A client of mine is looking to integrate more tightly to their Mailman 
> list. There's an archive page, but we're trying to format it nicely for 
> inclusion on their website so that it matches for members to see. I can 
> see two possibilities right now...
>
> 1.  We write a custom PHP application to scrape and store the archive 
> pages into a database to call later, however we want.
>
> 2.  We create an email address and subscribe it to the list. Any new 
> messages will be checked via a PHP script we build and stored in the 
> database, then we'll pull from our own archive format however we choose.

Assuming you have access to the Mailman installation, you can avoid both 
of these somewhat cludgy steps and access the master archive directly.

Each mailing list keeps its archive as a big mbox-formatted file, which 
you could presumably parse.

I also recall the ability to handle custom archiving (i.e. you can get the 
system to archive messages in a way more useful to you).  Mark will 
probably have more to say about this possibility if it exists, assuming 
there's nothing in the FAQ already about this.

You may wish to get the old messages out of the mbox master and then use 
some kind of custom archive handler to handle new messages.

Mailman3 (still in development/alpha state) will probably make all this a 
lot easier.
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Mailman Admin | 1 Jun 2011 17:03
Picon
Favicon

Re: PHP front-end for Mailman?

Hi William Ashworth

There is no database, but a file in mbox format.
You can find it under /${path_to_mailman}/archives/private/${listname}.mbox/

It contains all emails in order of arrival with all attachents.

Hope this helps a bit,
Christian Mack

On 06/01/2011 04:37 PM, William Ashworth wrote:
> 
> I'm attempting to learn more about the Mailman system in general as
> well. If there's some form of "database" that the system uses to
> store its archived message data, then I'm sure there's a way to build
> a script around it. If the only form of stored data is actually just
> static HTML files, then a scraper application may be the way to go.
> Thoughts?
> 
> I'm checking out the links you sent over. Much appreciated.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: Mailman Admin
> [mailto:mailman-admin <at> uni-konstanz.de]
> 
> On 06/01/2011 06:44 AM, William Ashworth wrote:
>> I've searched for a bit and perhaps nothing is available (or I'm 
>> typing the wrong searches).
>> 
>> A client of mine is looking to integrate more tightly to their
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Mark Sapiro | 1 Jun 2011 17:27
Favicon

Re: Setting options via email - confirmation rather than password?

On 6/1/11 1:56 AM, Andrew Hodgson wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Is there any way in Mailman to allow the users to set options
> (usually nomail style options) without the password argument?  The
> system would then send out a confirmation email which the user could
> reply or click a link in the email to confirm.

This would require significant source modifications.

> We have a lot of users who subscribe by sending to
> list-subscribe <at> domain.com and replying to the confirmation mail, they
> don't go near the web interface :)

But they should get a welcome message with their password when they
subscribe, and they should get monthly password reminders, or if they
don't, they can request a reminder via the email 'password' command.

You could edit the list's welcome message to further emphasize that they
need their password to set options such as no mail and perhaps to
explain how to change their password.

--

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark <at> msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    Better use your sense - B. Dylan
Permalink | Reply | 1 comment |

Gmane