Re: Testing Mailers.

[Arnt Gulbrandsen <arnt@gulbrandsen.priv.no>]

Sherwood Botsford <sherwood@space.ualberta.ca>
> In my other job, I inherited a HP-UX system that serves mail to 200
> users.  I've gotten zmailer to compile, but I'm hesitant about dropping
> it in.  How do you test mailers without wrecking users mail?

My way has been to start the new mailer for outgoing mail on Sunday
morning, stress-test it a bit, then start it for inbound mail, tail
-f'ing what happens all the while, stress-test it with inbound mail to
a few dummy accounts and some SMTP relay mail, declare it to be
healthy - and watch it closely all day.

Sometimes I've wrecked someone's mail.  But then again, computers are
always wrecking someone's something.  In September I let my /var/spool
grow full for more than an hour, and in August I had a 4G hard disk
crash: shit happens.  But try to make sure that the first dropped
message is the last one, and preferably that it's addressed to a dummy
account.

> E.g. is there a way that I can run two mail streams side by side, with
> the input streams from the existing mailer being dupliated to feed the
> new mailer?

Not easily.  It _would_ stress-test e.g. mailbox locking nicely,
though.

--Arnt