Mailing stopped! :(

[kyle]

Hi Dean,
      I've been using ListMail successfully for a long time now, but for some reason last night when I sent the newsletter it was paused when I woke up this morning (I sent it as a scheduled email).  I have about 185,000+ subscribers, and when I woke up this morning it was stalled with this message when I logged in:
Attention: You have items in the outgoing queue. Some mailings may be in progress.
Type           Subject                                                     Messages Left
Solo Email   [LPP] November Newsletter - Thanksgiving  141165  Resume | Cancel

I haven't yet clicked Resume because I'm going to ask my hosts if they can look into the issue.  Do you have any idea why it may have paused?  Usually there's no problem...  Is it okay for me to click Resume when it was sent by DailyMail and is clearly stalled?  Will that start from the beginning?  

BTW, I did a tail -f /var/log/maillog and saw that mail still is moving there, just very little of it...  When I checked the QMail Mail Queue, it showed just 149 messages, so I assume ListMail just froze?  

Does a reboot help in this case?  

I don't want to end up sending the newsletter twice to those 40,000 users it already went to...  Thanks in advance,
--Kyle

[kyle]

Hi all,
Well, I decided I couldn't wait, and I started sending it again with the Resume link.  It seems to have resumed properly, sending only to the remaining subscribers.  However, I hate having to send through the browser (what if the connection is interrupted?), and I'd really like to figure out why the mailing stalled like that...  Thanks in advance,
--Kyle

[DW]

It's hard to say what happened..  Perhaps your host did some maintenance or added a domain and had to restart the web or mysql server.

Resuming should work fine.  The next release will feature background sending so you won't need to keep the browser open.

[kyle]

It's hard to say what happened..  Perhaps your host did some maintenance or added a domain and had to restart the web or mysql server.

Well, it's my own dedicated colocated server, so that wouldn't be it (only my newsletter and one other site is on the server)...  I don't think I've made any changes to the server since my last newsletter send which went out fine, so there shouldn't be anything restarting mysql.  

By the way, is it any faster when dailymail sends the newsletter than when sending it in the browser?  It seems to be taking longer this time than usual...  Maybe not though.  Thanks,
--Kyle

[DW]

I'd do a check on the remaining disk space:

df -h

It can take longer to Resume because I try to save processing power, when possible, by not re-loading the message body and subject for every single user being mailed.  This is only done with messages sent with "Send Email", though.

It's possible ListMail experienced a hiccup communicating with the server when sending to a certain email address.  There are a few known responses (v1.77b) where the program will become out of sync with the server.  Typically, unexpected errors occur if a local user that is undeliverable is on the list or, on some servers, if you try to send to a non-existent domain.  You could try setting up a test list with these conditions and see if you can cause an error by sending email to it.

[kyle]

I'd do a check on the remaining disk space:

df -h

It's possible ListMail experienced a hiccup communicating with the server when sending to a certain email address.  There are a few known responses (v1.77b) where the program will become out of sync with the server.  

Yeah, I have plenty of disk space.  Are there any fixes in the works for the possible "hiccups" you mentioned?

BTW, the newsletter completed sending okay after I resumed it in the browser.    Take care,
--Kyle

[DW]

Yes, absolutely.  All known hiccups are being investigated and fixed for the next update.