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Date:  Mon, 4 Feb 2008 22:23:20 -0600
From:  Larry Smith <lesmith (at mark) ecsis.net>
Subject:  [coba-e:11903] Re: 452 Too many recipients
To:  coba-e (at mark) bluequartz.org
Message-Id:  <200802042223.20403.lesmith (at mark) ecsis.net>
In-Reply-To:  <20080205004404.M5678 (at mark) nwdemarc.com>
References:  <20080204212516.M26395 (at mark) nwdemarc.com> <200802050355.29666.bq (at mark) solarspeed.net> <20080205004404.M5678 (at mark) nwdemarc.com>
X-Mail-Count: 11903

On Monday 04 February 2008 18:50, rcaron wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Feb 2008 03:55:29 +0100, Michael Stauber wrote
>
> > Hi rcaron,
> >
> > > I had a user that is trying to send out 1000. This is what she emailed
> > > me
> > >
> > >  "Is there a way I can send one
> > >  email to 1000 people at a time?
> >
> > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
> >
> > # maximum number of recipients per SMTP envelope
> > O MaxRecipientsPerMessage=25
> >
> > That setting may prevent that emails have more than the given number of
> > recipients. You can either comment that setting out, or raise the number.
> > Of course you need to restart Sendmail after making changes
> > to /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
> >
> > /etc/init.d/sendmail restart
> >
> > --
> > With best regards,
> >
> > Michael Stauber
> >
> > --
> > This message has been scanned for viruses and
> > dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
> > believed to be clean.
> Michael,
>
> Here is what I set at now.
>
> # maximum number of recipients per SMTP envelope
> #O MaxRecipientsPerMessage=0
>
> So I should change it to this.
>
> # maximum number of recipients per SMTP envelope
> #O MaxRecipientsPerMessage=25
>
> And as you stated restart sendmail.  This should let the user to send out
> bulk emails (News Letters)
>
> Thanks its really a big help!
>
> Rob Caron
>

(re-ordered to correct top-posting)

Rob,

  IF your current default is 0 (as indicated by your example above) then 
changing that line (which is commented out by the way) will have no effect at 
all on your mail server accepting her mail.  I _highly_ suspect that you 
(she) is running into a "maximum" header value and not maximum number of 
recipients.  Sendmail is not designed to handle 1000 recipients per message - 
and besides that, it is really really (really, really) bad form to do so and 
thereby advertise all the email addresses on ones list to everyone else on 
the list...  (although the spammers love it because they get 999 addresses in 
one fell swoop)...

Recommend:

1.  She get a localized mailing list software such as Arrow or one that allows 
her to compose and do the mailing locally.  Such software then "compiles" the 
list and sends like addresses (it puts aol addresses together, yahoo 
addresses together) and splits the message up into manageable parts (multiple 
messages) and even gives you a report on which ones sent correctly, which 
failed, etc, etc...

2.  Create a mailman or majordomo list for her on your server so she can send 
one message which will then be parced out and sent to the "list" in a 
manageable format.  Personally I prefer the mailman approach since it also 
(mailman) does the bounce processing and even removes addresses from the list 
when their mail bounces "x" number of times (three by default I believe).

-- 
Larry Smith
SysAd ECSIS.NET
sysad (at mark) ecsis.net