Thread

Although we have been using the Mailing List module successfully for some time, the last couple of emails that we have attempted to send to our list have returned an internal server error.

We can send emails fine to a smaller, testing list of about 10 contacts.  However the main list of about 1500 contacts will not send.

We have tried setting to batches of 200, same error.

I have searched the forums for a similar issue but the closest I can find is the one below, however, I am not sure if it is similar since our issue seems specifically related to the size of our list (since we can send the exact email to the smaller, testing list).

Advice and help appreciated!  Thanks!

(On 1.6.8.  Interested in upgrading to 2.x but am not willing to do so at this time due to the need to use modules which are not yet 2.x compliant.)

This question may be related to a resolved thread.

Hi, Charmedworks.

You might need to reduce your batch size to something like 50.

After writing the support post last evening, I tried reducing the batch size to 100.  The browser still returned the 500 error.  However when I viewed the record for emails sent, the email had been sent - but only to the first batch of 100.

Should I still try batch of 50?  I’d rather not be “spamming” our contact list with multiple emails, so only want to try this if it seems needed.

Do you have any guidance for questions to ask my hosting provider?

Yes, I think it would be best to ask your hosting provider about any restrictions placed on the number of outgoing emails, a mail server AUP or anything like that. There also might be some more information in the web server’s error log regarding the 500 error message.

My host checked their records, replied with this information - and said that they thought this was the problem:

<quoting hosting company>

[Sun Feb 13 19:29:26 2011] [notice] mod_fcgid: too much /var/www/vhosts/(myurlhere)/httpdocs/index.php process(current:8, max:8), skip the spawn request

There are 3000+ messages between 7:29 and 7:32 on 2/13.  It appears that it is trying to spawn way more instances than the configuration will allow.  I don’t believe we have made any changes to that configuration anytime recently.

<end quoting hosting company>

I’m confused as this was not the day that we tried to send the email.  Does the error message say anything to you that I do not understand?

Surprised the hosting company didn’t give you much more information on this. I did a quick Google and came back with this

It refers to the maximum number of fastcgi application instances allowed to run for any one fastcgi application.

Would your host be able to increase this number to higher than 8

Do you have any add-ons installed?

You are using the Communicate Area correct?

A related article here

Thanks, this is helpful.  I noticed a setting on our hosting account that I think had recently changed - there is a choice to run PHP as a “CGI mode” or “Fast CGI mode” - “Fast CGI mode” is chosen. I don’t recall it as an option before and will check with them to see if their defaults have changed.  I will post back and let you all know.

Sounds good, We’ll be here.

Hello, I worked with my hosting company to change the php settings to use “CGI mode” instead of “Fast CGI mode” as this seems to have at least temporarily solved the issue, allowing us to send out the current mailing.  I will keep any eye on it and post here if there are any continued issues, but perhaps that’s the only issue that we will run into.

Thanks to all here for fast help.

Finally, we are considering moving to MailChimp for our email newsletter and list maintenance.  The Expression Engine Mailing list module has been fine to use while getting started, but now that our list is larger, used more frequently, we are looking into reporting, segmentation, and other offerings from MailChimp that could be useful to us.  So, it may be this is the last large mailing we do with the EE mailing list module 😊

Hi charmedworks,

Glad that Sue and John Henry were able to help you resolve this issue.

Cheers

Greg