[Gllug] Sending lots of emails "crashes a server"

[Tom Schutzer-Weissmann]

Is it likely that a user could crash a Linux server by doing a mass mailing?

I've been looking through the logs, which all stop abruptly and then resume nearly an hour later with a restart. There don't seem to be any panic messages, no expiring HALism.

Besides, the system that sends the mails sends them in batches of 50, with a pause between each batch. From the maillog, 3000 had been submitted, half of which were sent successfully, the other 1500 were queued. On the face of it, 1500 queued emails don't seem enough to bring the server down.

Can anyone suggest what else I should do to pin this down?

A separate issue is, is this a sensible way of sending out lots of mails? Not spam, I hasten to add.

Cheers,
Tom SW
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