[thelist] Cold Fusion, Q-Mail, Spool Files

[j.d. welch]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2003, at 01:37 AM, Frank wrote:

> I guess my next question would be this, then. Imagine that I'm looping
> though half a million rows in a database, each containing names,
> addresses
> and so on, merging it with text.
>
> Can I really call qmail-inject once for each row, pass it parameter
> and so
> on? Seems like asking it to do this once every 10 milliseconds or so is
> asking for a bit much.  Or am I underestimating the power of *nix?
> We've
> got a relatively decent server, but I'm not sure how to assess what
> sort
> of  load this will place on it.

Actually, the problem isn't going to be with injecting a half million
messages into your MTA, but rather with the queueing and retrying that
will happen for messages that don't get through on the first try
(which, depending on the quality of the mailing list, can be 10% of the
addresses or more).  This is why enterprises that deal with mail
volumes on this level have dedicated mail admins who are expert in
making sure you won't bring your server down to its knees.

In any case, this isn't a question of Unix or your server's abilities
to process the mail. If you attempt to send a half million mail
messages as quickly as you can, the likely result will be that your ISP
will yank you off the network.  This behavior will look like spamming,
and your upstream ISP will react accordingly.  Your ISP probably even
has language in its terms-of-agreement that may result in your access
being suspended or cancelled.

First thing to do is contact your ISP and find out what its rules are
for mass emails.  Then, conform to them.  Simply injecting 500K mails
into qmail's stream isn't going to do this.  You need specialized
software that is designed for handling large mailing lists, such as
Mailman.

> If I do this, is it really a better choice than using cold fusion's
> cfmail tag?

Neither is appropriate.

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