Atomicorp

Posted: **Mon Jan 14, 2008 1:40 pm**

How do I tweak qmail / psa to speed up the sending of email from outlook?

I've added this /var/qmail/control/concurrencyremote and set it to 50 and I've added -Rt0 to /etc/xinetd.d/smtp_psa.

What else can I do to speed up the sending of email via outlook?

Thanks.

Posted: **Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:05 pm**

Did you restart xinetd? Do you have greylisting installed? Are you sending via smtps and have the RBL checks on?

Not much to go on here!

Posted: **Mon Jan 14, 2008 5:50 pm**

Yes, xinetd has been restarted after each config change. Sending through smtp, no greylisting, ony RBL's active are in ART's spamassassin.

psa 8.2.x
spamassassin-1-3.1.7-1.rhel3.art
qmail-scanner-1-2.01-14.el4.art
clamd-(none)-0.92-1.el3.rf

Posted: **Tue Jan 15, 2008 2:32 pm**

I'm not seeing any slowdown in my setup, which souds similar to yours. Could it be at the client end? Does a different mail client make a difference?

My smtps_psa file: (my smtp_psa would have even more checks)

Code: Select all

service smtps
{
        socket_type     = stream
        protocol        = tcp
        wait            = no
        disable         = no
        user            = root
        instances       = UNLIMITED
        server          = /var/qmail/bin/tcp-env
        server_args     = -Rt0 /var/qmail/bin/relaylock /var/qmail/bin/greylist /var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd /var/qmail/bin/smtp_auth /var/qmail/bin/true /var/qmail/bin/cmd5checkpw /var/qmail/bin/true
}

Posted: **Thu Jan 17, 2008 11:20 pm**

Ok, now I'm getting this message:
prefork: server reached --max-children setting, consider raising it

I've googled and all I can find is for max-clients...

I've picked up a client that sends from outlook a few thousand messages every couple of days. Some of the users sending the emails will have a metric ton of messages in their out boxes waiting to be sent which also prevents them from receiving any new messages.

They are also getting duplicate messages. If one sends a test email to another the message may be repeated in 2 or 3 minutes. This doesn't happen all the time but occasionally.

This is the reason I started asking how to speed up this process. Short of them getting a different mail client or a 3rd party tool to send these email blasts out what can I do to tweak qmail, qmail-scanner, spamassassin, etc...

Thanks.

Posted: **Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:17 am**

max-children is a spamassassin setting, and it could be what is slowing you down. Do you have network checks enabled? Many thousands of messages sounds somewhat suspect to me, but here is what I'd do - remove qscan, greylist, etc. from the smtps chain and tell them to use smtps for their large blasts.

If they are really that high volume, you have to ask if running their mail through a plesk box is really the best way to do it.

Posted: **Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:23 am**

You could do that with the submission port too.

Posted: **Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:39 am**

One additional thought:

If they have a static list of names, why not use a mailing list instead? It would handle bounces, unsubscribes, etc. with far less work for your client than Outlook. And the best part is they are only sending one email decreasing your server traffic for this function by about 50%.

Posted: **Fri Jan 18, 2008 6:34 pm**

The plan is to move them to a mailing list program down the road. They have about 3k clients and have a database of potential clients that ranges up to 10k. What happens is they pick a batch out of this mess and send an email blast out. All ligit marketing as the email they have, have been veted, meaning folks signed up for this information.

So currently I need to find a solution to speed up this process. Where would I configure the submission port?

As for the smtps, that is just telling outlook to use ssl or just sending the email to a different port, 465? and then remove the checks from the smtps file?

Thanks for the help on this.

Posted: **Fri Jan 18, 2008 6:44 pm**

Submission port is set under Server -> Mail and uses port 587 for mail submission. (how long until people start scanning for that!?)

The other option is setting outlook to use ssl and using port 465 with a modified smtps_psa xinetd file.

Posted: **Fri Jan 18, 2008 9:09 pm**

Thanks, that is what I thought, just glad to have clarification. No need for a cert under the outlook option yes?

Current smtps_psa server args...
server_args = -Rt0 /var/qmail/bin/relaylock /var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd /var/qmail/bin/smt
p_auth /var/qmail/bin/true /var/qmail/bin/cmd5checkpw /var/qmail/bin/true

Question on this, why are there two statements to : /var/qmail/bin/true ?

Atomicorp

Speed up Outlook sending through qmail...

Speed up Outlook sending through qmail...