Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ucbvax!parc.xerox.com!janssen From: janssen@parc.xerox.com (Bill Janssen) Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.andrew Subject: Re: messages - a confession Message-ID: <8aacULUB0KGW44iMMw@holmes.parc.xerox.com> Date: 11 Jul 90 01:59:51 GMT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 17 I use messages exclusively (on a Sun-4/260, 32MB, SunOS 4.0.3). Even over the phone lines on a X terminal... I have a fairly bulky .AMS.flames file. It does take too long (5-15 seconds) to sort, say, 10, new messages. But individual messages come up instantly, and any delays seem to correlate well with file-server problems. I wonder if running a daemon cui job that continuously read and sorted your mail would help? It would break tools like biff or the console mail display, but it would offload the sorting overhead. My pet peeve is message drop-off time between `sendmessage' and /usr/lib/sendmail. It hangs for dozens of seconds -- unlike /bin/Mail, or GNU Emacs's version of sendmail. Why is that? And why should the mail-reading tool be locked up during that time? Why isn't that forked off in the background? Are there some sendmail switches set wrong? Bill