Mail sorting???

[ian at airs.com (Ian Lance Taylor)]

   Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 08:55:56 -0500 (CDT)
   From: <joel at oarcorp.com>

   > Is it just me or is somebody else also receiving answers before
   > the questions are posted?
   >
   > For example take the mail from Jay Kulpinski 'memory management...'
   > and the reply from Patrick Doyle 'Re: memory management...'
   > 
   > The second mail was relayed to me before the first one.

   There is no attempt to sort messages on our side.  If it is happening it
   is purely accidental.  Is there a configuration option on sendmail or
   majordomo that might have been (incorrectly) left in a default state that
   needs to be changed?

No, the usual problem is just that sendmail is easily overloaded when
handling large mailing lists on a slow machine or with a poor net
connection.  It may help to run the queue more often, if it doesn't
push the load on your machine too high; this is the -q option.

You should periodically run sendmail -bp on oar3remote.oarcorp.com to
see what the mail queue looks like.

If you can, switch to qmail and ezmlm.  They are much more efficient
at handling large mailing lists.

   > Received: from oar3remote.oarcorp.com (remote1.oarcorp.com [208.166.120.97] 
   > (may be forged))
   > 	by axis1.axis.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA14421
   > 	for <chn at intego.de>; Wed, 19 May 1999 11:43:53 +0200 (CEST)
   > Received: (from daemon at localhost)
   > 	by oar3remote.oarcorp.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id KAA10282
   > 	for rtems-list-list; Mon, 17 May 1999 10:34:04 -0500
   > Received: from net2.gendyn.com (net2.gendyn.com [204.60.171.9])
   > 	by oar3remote.oarcorp.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id KAA10277
   > 	for <rtems-list at oarcorp.com>; Mon, 17 May 1999 10:34:02 -0500
   > Received: from [166.16.19.7] (helo=campfire.gdds.com)
   > 	by net2.gendyn.com with esmtp (Exim 2.04 #3)
   > 	id 10jPGb-0001RM-00
   > 	for rtems-list at oarcorp.com; Mon, 17 May 1999 11:25:21 -0400

This message took 9 minutes to reach oarcorp.com.  It then sat on
oar3remote.oarcorp.com for two days, from May 17 to May 19.

   > Received: from oar3remote.oarcorp.com (remote1.oarcorp.com [208.166.120.97] 
   > (may be forged))
   > 	by axis1.axis.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id BAA15274
   > 	for <chn at intego.de>; Wed, 19 May 1999 01:31:19 +0200 (CEST)
   > Received: (from daemon at localhost)
   > 	by oar3remote.oarcorp.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id IAA13337
   > 	for rtems-list-list; Tue, 18 May 1999 08:10:31 -0500
   > Received: from charity.harvard.net (charity.harvard.net [206.137.222.16])
   > 	by oar3remote.oarcorp.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id IAA13332
   > 	for <rtems-list at oarcorp.com>; Tue, 18 May 1999 08:10:29 -0500
   > Received: from delcomsys.com (wks199.delcomsys.com [140.239.38.199])
   > 	by charity.harvard.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id JAA13107;
   > 	Tue, 18 May 1999 09:06:25 -0400 (EDT)

This message took 4 minutes to reach oarcorp.com.  It then sat on
oar3remote.oarcorp.com for nearly 24 hours.

Needless to say, delays like this at oarcorp.com are making the lists
difficult to use.  I am also seeing similar large delays in receiving
mail, and I am also receiving mail messages out of order, so this is
not in any way limited to Christian Haan.

Ian