CHANNELS

CHANNELS by Reed Sandberg
Copyright (c) 2007-2008 The SMB Exchange, INC

This patch is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the Artistic License.

This patch for (net)qmail comes with NO WARRANTY.

RELEASE: November 15, 2008


qmail manages two different queues
with different configurable concurrency settings (rates) based on a set
of domains - those delivered locally (control files: locals,
virtualdomains, concurrencylocal) and those delivered remotely (domains
not listed in  above control files and concurrencyremote). Luckily,
qmail's author (DJB) spent some time abstracting the implementation of
these channels and this patch advances the abstraction to add an
arbitrary number of channels - each with a distinct set of domains and
throttling capabilities.

BIG PICTURE
With ext_todo patch. Adapted from:
EXTTODO by Claudio Jeker <jeker@n-r-g.com> and
Andre Oppermann <opi@nrg4u.com>
(c) 1998,1999,2000,2001,2002 Internet Business Solutions Ltd.


               +-------+   +-------+       +-------+
               | clean |   | clean |       | logger|
               +--0-1--+   +--0-1--+       +---0---+           +-----------+
         trigger  ^ |         ^ |              |             +->0,1 lspawn |
            |     | v         | v              v            /  +-----------+
 +-------+  v  +--2-3--+   +--5-6--------------0-------+   /
 |       |  |  |       0<--7                         1,2<-+
 | queue |--+--| todo  |   | send                      |
 |       |  |  |       1-->8                         3,4<-+
 +-------+     +-------+   +--11,12---...-------X,Y----+   \
                                |                |          \  +-----------+
                                v                v           +->0,1 rspwan |
                            +--0,1-+         +--0,1-+          +-----------+
                            |rspawn|  ...    |rspawn|    
                            +------+         +------+       

Communication between qmail-send and qmail-todo

todo -> send:
   D[01]{n}<mesgid>\0
          Start delivery for a new message with id <mesgid>.
          the character '0' or '1' indicates whether this message
          will go through the corresponding channel (false/true)
          by position where n is the number of channels. E.g. D1011<msgid>\0:
          means there are four channels, the first 2 are always
          the local and default remote channels, and the rest are
          an optional number of supplemental channels (defined
          at compile-time by conf-channels). So this message
          has a local recipient, and a recipient on the first and
          second supplemental channels.
   L<string>\0
          Dump string to the logger without adding additional \n or similar.
send -> todo:
   H      Got a SIGHUP, reread ~/control/locals, ~/control/virtualdomains,
          ~/control/concurrencyremote, ~/control/concurrencylocal,
          ~/control/concurrencysupplX, ~/control/supplsX
   X      Quit ASAP.

qmail-todo sends "\0" terminated messages whereas qmail-send just send one
character to qmail-todo.


CAVEATS
qmail-qread ignores all supplemental channels - contributions are welcome!

Supplemental channels use qmail-rspawn for remote recipients only.

Dynamic throttling and resource limits
File descriptor limits are imposed on a per-process basis (FD_SET), on a
per-account basis (ulimit -n, /etc/security/limits.conf on Linux, pam limits, etc.)
and then on a system-wide basis by the OS (/proc/sys/fs/file-max on Linux, etc).
concurrencyremote, concurrencysupplX, etc are each subject to the hard limit in
conf-spawn, which in turn is bounded by per-process limits. Note that this limit
applies separately to each queue, not to all queues in total. The sum of all
concurrency limits for each queue in total is bounded on a per-account basis
(ulimit -n). These limits can easily be approached if you are running many
supplemental channels.

qmail double checks the concurrency limits on startup for each channel (using FD_SET)
and silently curbs them if needed because bad things happen if this limit is breached.
If you're sending qmail-send a HUP signal after editing concurrency limits (dynamic
throttling) be aware that qmail's builtin checks can be circumvented, here's what
qmail's author has to say on the subject (from chkspawn.c):
This means that the qmail daemons could crash if you set the run-time concurrency higher
than [the per-process limit].

Even if the per-process limits are in check, per-account and system-wide file descriptor
limits may still cause bad things to happen if you're not careful (you've been warned!).

Enjoy!
Reed Sandberg