Bulk Emails/Server Load

[aee156]

My server load goes through the roof 22.00 - 50.00 whenever I send out just 400 emails at a one time in a bulk email to customers. After the bulk email the server load goes back to normal .42 around there, is there anything I can do to make the server load stay that low when sending out bulk emails???

[abubin]

you can try sending it batches. Like 40 emails at one time, wait for 10 minutes then send another 40 and so on.

Another method is to use third party software for sending mailling lists. One such program is phplist. You can set sending mails to wait x seconds (you decide) between each mail. Or by batch of y per hour. BUT a very big BUT, those setup is quite hard to configure as you need to manually do cronjobs and so on. If you need help on phplist, you need to refer to their forum. There are many others out there.

[chirpy]

Another idea is to queue emails if the load goes high so that they're processed more slowly over time using:

queue_only_load = 5

[aee156]

I am a novice on this cpanel and SSH command stuff.

Do I type that command queue_only_load = 5 into ssh when logged into the server or is that a setting in my WHM that I need to change??

Also can I set that number to whatever I want?

This will be great and I think will fix my problem if I can get it down right.

Thanks

[fleksi]

you can edit /etc/exim.conf, put in the first line:

queue_only_load = 5 or whatever you want.

-fl-

[chirpy]

That's not a good idea as it will be overwritten on the next exim upgrade. Simply go into WHM > Exim Configuration Editor > Adcanced Mode > and add that line into the first textarea and save.

[aee156]

Hey Thanks Guys!!!

I also wanted to know what the queue load actually does??

Does it only allow 5 emails to go out at one time or per hour?? How does that work?

[chirpy]

That directive instructs exim to place all email into the mail queue rather than processing it if the servers load average is 5 or over. It will then process that queued email once the load had dropped below 5.