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Increasing qmail sending limits

  • Applies to: All (dv)

  • Difficulty: Medium

  • Time needed: 10 minutes

  • Tools needed: SSH, ROOT, VI

 

WARNING:

(mt) Media Temple only supports the basic operation and up-time of our (dv) & (dpv) Dedicated-Virtual Servers.  Please consult our Scope of Support for further details. Customers should proceed with caution as this article is UNSUPPORTED by (mt) Media Temple and Plesk.

The default configuration for qmail on the (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Servers may be considered relatively conservative if you are sending large amounts of email in a short period of time.  This article will allow you to send emails more reliably while still maintaining compliance with servers which implement greylisting.

To start, run the following commands, line by line:

NOTE:

Please verify that these setting have not already been customized, as running the  commands will overwrite any changes they have made. The following command will show you whether those files exist:

 ls /var/qmail/control | egrep 'timeoutremote|timeoutsmtpd|concurrencyremote'


echo "120" > /var/qmail/control/timeoutremote
echo "120" > /var/qmail/control/timeoutsmtpd
echo "40" > /var/qmail/control/concurrencyremote 

The default timeouts are set to 20 minutes, or 1200 seconds. So if the mail server on the other end is not responding, the outgoing email stays in qmail's remote queue for 20 minutes before it fails. By default there are 20 outgoing slots for email so this can backup quickly. These settings also increase the number of emails which can be sent at one time to 40. These settings should be safe for all (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Servers.

 When you have made the changes, restart qmail with the following command:

 /etc/init.d/qmail restart

Mail should now begin to process faster on your (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server.


Revisions:

11-07-2008: Article Creation. Thanks Nick!


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