Denys Beauchemin wrote:

> I was wondering what happened to the list this afternoon.  Then I
> realized it must have bogged down from all the attachments that
> Charles sent.  I believe this requires something more serious than
> wet noodles. I think it's time for the lo-mein.  Not just for the
> initial post, but for sending it 3 times and then having to read all
> the messages complaining about the attachments.  You know, like this
> message!

Sorry for belated reply (chronologically speaking) but you are quite
correct.  This was "The Shirt That Choked Raven".  The only costly one
that I'm aware of was the BMP encoded one this afternoon about 6:00 PM
EDT which was 3Mb.  This went to between 800-900 recipients over our
congested 1.088Mb internet pipe.  Raven's mailer license is limited at
50 threads, so we can deliver only that many at a time at that rate,
notwithstanding the incoming queues.

Raven was earlier running with a 2 hour lag, it got as bad as 4, now it
is starting to get reasonable (else I wouldn't be here babysitting it
remotely).  Not much else I can do to alleviate the problem besides
driving down and removing the queued mail manually, no thanks, it should
work itself out (response is already better).  However, Raven is still
under quite a workload with a backlog.

Not to chastise Charles (we all make mistakes), just validating Denys'
perception that the big mail item tied up our resources for the time
being.  And I must say this is a first, I've never seen raven working
this hard (not that this is a good thing).

It should work itself out by morning, no doubt to be followed up by the
questions of "is HP3000-L alive?" which have no doubt queued up behind
the mail backlog.

The current backlog appears to be in the neighborhood of 2-3 hours, but
since outgoing mail isn't necessarily queued chronologically, your
mileage may vary.  The average length is getting shorter but it's still
not in the comfort range.

> As a punishment, I propose that Charles bring, free of charge, a polo
> shirt for each and every attendee of the Wednesday HP3000-L luncheon
> attendee.  All I favor, just show up at the luncheon for your free
> polo shirt.

Well, that might be a bit harsh :-)  What we have here is the internet
equivalent of an innocent user doing an SQL query during prime time of
a Cartesian product join of two tables with "lots of rows" and numerous
selection criteria.  It's not immediately obvious to everyone that BMP
graphics (especially uncompressed MS Paint ones) are so "fat".

Anyway, hopefully the queues will clear by morning or I may have to
resort to more extreme measures :-)

Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>