Bob Tanner wrote:
> 
> Quoting Ben Lutgens (blutgens at sistina.com):
> > > design does not lead to a distributed processing model. The bottleneck will
> > > always be the mbox file and the write-exclusive lock to it.
> > 
> > Yeah, too bad there's not a filesystem that supports byte-range locking
> > (that I know of)
> 
> A better solution, IMHO, would be to strip the archiving part of mailman out and
> make it a seperate process. Thus, you'd be able to distribute the
> receiving/delivery and archiving/web processes.
> 
> The hard "hit" on the list server is appending files to the huge mbox files. But
> the next hardest "hit" is all the search engines spidering the archives.
> 

Maybe search engine spiders ought to be limited to the middle of the night?

Given the P.I.T.A. factor associated with maintaining a fast, working mailing list,
"choice B" might be to examine a Mn.tclug usenet newsgroup...