yet another apache2 tuning thread

[Ovidiu]

hmm.... I will consider that a last-resort action - if I can't get this working smoothly, I'll have to recommend my friend to get a VPS and move it over for him.
Unfortunately I guess it will be quite difficult finding a VPS with no restrictions, won't it? Or are there usually no limits on VPS in terms of volumes of mails, etc?

[erosbk]

If the vps is not used for spam, there will be no limits in sending newletters (limits will be ever, how much emails per hour, etc) but the vps will be saturated, not the entire server...

You can have a vps using just one proccesor, 40gb of disk space and 512 of ram for example... the other resources will be free for others vps for example...

See first if you can limit how much emails are sent per hour for your friend's site... maybe you can control it to not impact the overral server...

[Ovidiu]

lok, I am not going to set up VPS on my server for him. if I can't sort it out he's gotta move to a VPS somewhere, far from my server :-)

yes, I have set up his whole newsletter system and it should be fool proof.
he has 10.000 recipients and I set it to mail 50/minute. that way it will send his whole newsletter in about 3h...

doesn't sound too much to me...

[erosbk]

did it work? please, share with me where you set the limit pls xD

[Ovidiu]

I haven't changed anything. all the figures I gave above have been in place the whole time.
I found out some more things:

the newsletter I use , uses a tiny 1x1 px gif for tracking. THat means if too many users open their email at the same time, they overload the server. I realized I had recently made a change to this vhost, that overrode the timeout settigns so for php-cgi so they were reset back at 3600 :-(

also I had set up the newsletter to link to images included instead of attaching them. this makes the emails smaller but on the other hand puts extra strain on apache when the mails get opened.

my plan is to move him to his own VPS running nginx. since he will be the only user, there is no need for a control panel like ispcfg, no need for apache2.

I am already doing first tests on the VPS and its incredibly fast (talking about nginx) :-)

some more tests to be done then I can go ahead with postfix and setting up the newsletter again.

meanwhile I have change the newsletter on the current system to stop tracking via image and to attach the images. also implemented caching for this site. makes the server ok, but not the ideal solution so I will move him to VPS as I said :-)

thanks for all your help!

[Ovidiu]

ok, I've moved this guy and his domain + his huge newsletter onto a small VPS, set it up to use ngnx (no ispcfg sicne he doesn't need it) and all is working perfectly.

currently looking for a how-to set up his email server. I'd like to use psotfix since I've used it before. He doesn't need any virtual users, since I only need a hand full of email accounts so I am going with system users.
jsut need some pointers setting it all up. need to offer imap and pop3 so I guess I am going with courier?
not sure what to do about spam/antivirus integration, any recommended how-tos for Debian squeeze?

any hints or links for me?