Mailing-list slowness

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi,

On Thu, 2006-01-12 at 15:04 +0100, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> P.S. The list is ridiculously slow. Grrr. I have complained to the gnu
> sysadmins and will let you know if they have any comments.

At least they are fast :) I asked if I could quote their response to the
list and this is what they said:

> Yes, please do, and accept my apologies for the current state of
> things. I can only promise that we will do everything we can to make
> it better in the future.

> [...]

> Unfortunately, the situation is really that lists.gnu.org, a
> uniprocessor Athlon XP machine with older IDE disks - in reality a
> desktop machine - is servicing over 2500+ lists (plus regular web
> access from maintainers to said lists). Even assuming it was not being
> bombarded with spam, it would still struggle to keep up with this
> load.
> 
> We are, however, nearing the GPLv3 launch process, which will mean
> that after the conference, sysadmin time will be free again to work on
> the replacement for lists (which is a 4-way Opteron 270 (2x dual core)
> with 4gb of RAM and fast 10K RPM disks - a slight improvement :) ).
>  
> > Sorry for complaining. If there is anything we can do, please let us
> > know.
> 
> Your complaints are totally reasonable and understandable, but our
> hands are tied until we can get the new list server going. Any time we
> spend on re-engineering the current Rube Goldberg-esque setup detracts
> from the goal of replacing it entirely with something vastly more
> efficient.

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