faxrunq very broken on large queues

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>>>>> "Gert" == Gert Doering <gert@greenie.muc.de> writes:

    Gert> On Fri, Nov 27, 1998 at 08:39:53AM +0200, Graham Leggett
    Gert> wrote:

    >> I just tried a bulk fax run of around 400 faxes in the queue,
    >> and it failed spectacularly. During normal operation, I run
    >> faxrunq once a minute from cron. The main problem I experienced
    >> was that so many instances of faxrunq eventually caused the all
    >> of them to fail with file open errors, pipe open errors,
    >> etc. As a result of this, reporting on which faxes were sent
    >> and which faxes were not stopped working, as sendmail wouldn't
    >> run correctly.

    Gert> Uh, faxrunq is not really meant to be run once per minute.
    Gert> If you want that response time, use faxrunq*d*.

    Gert> *Especially* if you have multiple modems, you shouldn't use
    Gert> faxrunq, because it's locking/jobs distribution scheme is
    Gert> pretty lame - it was never meant for that, and doesn't
    Gert> handle it well.

    Gert> Faxrunqd needs Perl5, runs all the time, and was written for
    Gert> a customer that sends about 1000 faxes a day over 5 modem
    Gert> lines, all during business hours (10:00-17:00).  It works
    Gert> for them very smoothly since day 1...

    Gert> (Get a copy of 1.1.19, just for the latest version of
    Gert> faxrunqd.  I have done lots of fine tuning on the scheduler
    Gert> and "kaput modem handler" between 1.1.14 and 1.1.19.)

I am glad to hear this, as I am currently working on a web based order 
enrty project that will take orders over the web and fax the orders to 
the respective vendors.  I will be running 6 fax lines and will need
to process 712 orders (1 fax per order) per day, concentrated in 2
periods of one hour each.  Each order results in a single page fax
being sent, so during peak load, I need to send a fax every 10
seconds.  Hopefully faxrunqd will be up to the job.  :-)

-- 
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Elijah Laboratories Inc. 457 Signal Lane, Grayslake IL 60030  fax 847 543-4061
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