Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!ames!amdahl!pacbell!pbhyd!jow
From: jow@PacBell.COM (Jeff Westman)
Newsgroups: ca.unix,pb.unix,comp.unix.questions,pb.sources.unix
Subject: Mass Mailings Using Mailx
Keywords: Mail, Mailx
Message-ID: <1487@pbhyd.PacBell.COM>
Date: 11 Jan 90 16:12:52 GMT
Followup-To: poster
Distribution: usa
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 25

Due to the large number of answers and requests for a "posting-recap", I
am posting a SHORT summary of what I received.  

This is what people said:

  (1)  If you have "sendmail" (we don't)  -  use it.  This *IS* the ideal.

  (2)  You could use 'bcc' (~b).  This is good, as long as you address to
       at least one person and bcc the rest.  The only problem with this 
       is that mailx (probably mail, elm also) puts an incredible load on
       the operating system.  Mailx does a lot of I/O swapping and resource
       "hogging", hence bringing, the system (at least ours) to it's knees 
       (almost).  I suppose if one were only sending to a couple dozen people 
       (at most), this wouldn't be too bad.  MY PROBLEM is that I am sending 
       to about 100 people, most of which are outside Unix, which means I will
       be also tying up the lines to other systems not to mention blowing-up 
       the spool buffer.

My solution was to send to another system that has sendmail under an alias,
of which the remote system does the mailing for me.

In summary, if you have sendmail, use it.  If you are going to be sending to 
LOTS of people, you should first check with your System Administrator.

    - Jeff