Re: Majordomo performance issue

["Mailing List Subscriber" <lists @ ListOwners . Net>]

Daniel Liston <dliston@sonny.org> said:

> You may want to consider examining this section of the majordomo.cf file;
> 
> # You can force Majordomo to delay any processing if the system load is too
> # high by uncommenting the following lines.  THIS ONLY WORKS if 
your "uptime"
> # command (usually found in /usr/bin/uptime or /usr/bsd/uptime)
> # returns a string like:
> #   5:23pm  up  5:51,  9 users,  load average: 0.19, 0.25, 0.33
> #
> $max_loadavg = 10;                 # Choose the maximum allowed load
> #
> $uptime = `/usr/bin/uptime` if -x '/usr/bin/uptime';     # Get system uptime
> #$uptime = `/usr/bsd/uptime` if -x '/usr/bsd/uptime';     # or uptime is 
over here.
> #
> ($avg_1_minute, $avg_5_minutes, $avg_15_minutes) =
>      $uptime =~ /average:\s+(\S+),\s+(\S+),\s+(\S+)/;
> #
> exit 75 if ($avg_15_minutes >= $max_loadavg);           # E_TEMPFAIL
> #
> 
> Tune to your specific needs of course.  On my little 400Mhz single proc
> intel box, I set $max_loadavg=2.
> 
> Dan Liston

Dan;

My question is whether this simply delays processing, or does it throw an 
error back to the sender of the message.  If majordomo barfs an error back at 
the sender I don't want to use it.  But if it silently waits for the load 
average to go down, then I'm absolutely going to implement it.  

If it barfs an error back to the sender, does it just completely exit and not 
do anything with the original email?  "exit 76" (an unknown error to me) 
looks pretty fatal, so "...to delay processing..." seems misleading.