Postgres Pro
Downloads
Home   >   mailing lists

Thread: What is the listserver at hub.org doing?

What is the listserver at hub.org doing?

From
"Oliver Elphick"
Date:
When I got a new message from Tom Lane at 7:30am in England, I wondered
if he was working on PostgreSQL all night as well as all day, so I looked
at the mail headers and found he had posted in mid-evening his time but
the message had taken 6 hours to be forwarded.

I got curious about the delays in mail forwarding through the mailing
lists and looked at the headers of some messages (see below).  It seems
that a message arrives at hub.org and then gets sat on for a few hours
before it is sent out again.  Sometimes it does an internal loop and
gets sat on twice!  (By comparison, the Debian listserver resends messages
within a minute.)

The result is that messages take a long time to get out on the mailing
list and so are answered unnecessarily by several people.

Why does this happen?


Received: from hub.org (hub.org [216.126.84.1])
    by mail.enterprise.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA25948
    for <olly@lfix.co.uk>; Fri, 27 Oct 2000 06:55:16 +0100 (GMT/BST)
Received: from hub.org.org (localhost [127.0.0.1])
    by hub.org (8.10.1/8.11.0) with SMTP id e9R5pdq12817;
    Fri, 27 Oct 2000 01:51:39 -0400 (EDT)
    (envelope-from pgsql-general-owner+M6935@hub.org)
Received: from hub.org.org (localhost [127.0.0.1])
    by hub.org (8.10.1/8.11.0) with SMTP id e9R2DeU15616
    for <pgsql-general@hub.org>; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 22:13:44 -0400 (EDT)
    (envelope-from pgsql-general-owner@hub.org)
Received: from chameleon.view.net.au (calypso.view.net.au [203.30.237.210])
    by hub.org (8.10.1/8.11.0) with ESMTP id e9QNSWU58965
    for <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 19:28:33 -0400 (EDT)
    (envelope-from mtw@birdseye.view.net.au)



Received: from hub.org (hub.org [216.126.84.1])
    by mail.enterprise.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA26047
    for <olly@lfix.co.uk>; Fri, 27 Oct 2000 06:55:49 +0100 (GMT/BST)
Received: from hub.org.org (localhost [127.0.0.1])
    by hub.org (8.10.1/8.11.0) with SMTP id e9R5pdq12808;
    Fri, 27 Oct 2000 01:51:39 -0400 (EDT)
    (envelope-from pgsql-general-owner+M6936@hub.org)
Received: from sss.pgh.pa.us (sss.pgh.pa.us [209.114.132.154])
    by hub.org (8.10.1/8.11.0) with ESMTP id e9R0tbU42933
    for <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 20:55:37 -0400 (EDT)
    (envelope-from tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us)


Received: from hub.org (hub.org [216.126.84.1])
    by mail.enterprise.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA02058
    for <olly@lfix.co.uk>; Fri, 27 Oct 2000 07:36:03 +0100 (GMT/BST)
Received: from hub.org.org (localhost [127.0.0.1])
    by hub.org (8.10.1/8.11.0) with SMTP id e9R6ZAq40016;
    Fri, 27 Oct 2000 02:35:10 -0400 (EDT)
    (envelope-from pgsql-general-owner+M6937@hub.org)
Received: from web10001.mail.yahoo.com (web10001.mail.yahoo.com [216.136.130.37])
    by hub.org (8.10.1/8.11.0) with SMTP id e9R4hJt28401
    for <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>; Fri, 27 Oct 2000 00:43:19 -0400 (EDT)
    (envelope-from jdearl@yahoo.com)
--
Oliver Elphick                                Oliver.Elphick@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight                              http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
PGP: 1024R/32B8FAA1: 97 EA 1D 47 72 3F 28 47  6B 7E 39 CC 56 E4 C1 47
GPG: 1024D/3E1D0C1C: CA12 09E0 E8D5 8870 5839  932A 614D 4C34 3E1D 0C1C
                 ========================================
     "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a
      branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast
      them into the fire, and they are burned."
                                             John 15:6

Re: What is the listserver at hub.org doing?

From
Tom Lane
Date:
"Oliver Elphick" <olly@lfix.co.uk> writes:
> When I got a new message from Tom Lane at 7:30am in England, I wondered
> if he was working on PostgreSQL all night as well as all day, so I looked
> at the mail headers and found he had posted in mid-evening his time but
> the message had taken 6 hours to be forwarded.

hub.org's mail forwarding has been seriously ill since about Monday...
the delays are not only much larger than normal, but wildly erratic
(anywhere from 1 to 6 hours, for messages posted at the same time!).

Dunno what Marc is doing about this, but I hope he gets it fixed soon.
It's a real PITA if you're trying to follow a discussion.

            regards, tom lane

Re: What is the listserver at hub.org doing?

From
Ian Lance Taylor
Date:
   Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 08:08:09 +0100
   From: "Oliver Elphick" <olly@lfix.co.uk>

   I got curious about the delays in mail forwarding through the mailing
   lists and looked at the headers of some messages (see below).  It seems
   that a message arrives at hub.org and then gets sat on for a few hours
   before it is sent out again.  Sometimes it does an internal loop and
   gets sat on twice!  (By comparison, the Debian listserver resends messages
   within a minute.)

   The result is that messages take a long time to get out on the mailing
   list and so are answered unnecessarily by several people.

   Why does this happen?

We had these problems on sourceware.cygnus.com (now
sources.redhat.com), which was (and is) running a number of large
mailing lists.  The problem was, in a word, sendmail.  We fixed it by
switching to qmail (http://www.qmail.org/).  Mail delivery on the
mailing lists dropped from hours to seconds.

Ian

Re: What is the listserver at hub.org doing?

From
The Hermit Hacker
Date:
uOn 27 Oct 2000, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:

>    Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 08:08:09 +0100
>    From: "Oliver Elphick" <olly@lfix.co.uk>
>
>    I got curious about the delays in mail forwarding through the mailing
>    lists and looked at the headers of some messages (see below).  It seems
>    that a message arrives at hub.org and then gets sat on for a few hours
>    before it is sent out again.  Sometimes it does an internal loop and
>    gets sat on twice!  (By comparison, the Debian listserver resends messages
>    within a minute.)
>
>    The result is that messages take a long time to get out on the mailing
>    list and so are answered unnecessarily by several people.
>
>    Why does this happen?
>
> We had these problems on sourceware.cygnus.com (now
> sources.redhat.com), which was (and is) running a number of large
> mailing lists.  The problem was, in a word, sendmail.  We fixed it by
> switching to qmail (http://www.qmail.org/).  Mail delivery on the
> mailing lists dropped from hours to seconds.

the problem here, in two words, is "slashdot effect" ... one of our
clients sites became very popular the beginning of this week, and altho he
expected it, he didnt' forwarn us.

We have a new machien coming in to which we are moving all our mail
services, including the mailing lists, so that they are unaffected by web
traffic.