mailing 100,000 messages from linux to my members

My initial concerns would be as follows:

1. Frequency of mailing.. 1 every 5 seconds
2. Alternate the ISP's you send to (Google, Yahoo, Comcast...)
3. Keep the content very cliean so it does not score high in spam elimination engines
4. Remove emails that bouse back to maintain a clean db.

Hope this helps!

Did you check to see what limits your ISP or hosting place on sending emails?  Limits range from 25 per hour to 1000 per day.  Almost nobody allows unlimited emails to be sent.

Looks like you'll be mailing for quite a while. 100,000 messages with one message every 5 seconds will run for the better part of 6 days.  Your script will get terminated and restarted, so you probably need to design in a mechanism that will allow that.  Perhaps a separate DB table with the email address and a "sent" column, so you can avoid re-sending messages.  You might also want to alphabetize the list and scan it visually for "honeypot" addresses, and avoid sending to those.  In the past some bad actors have signed up to social networks using the known addresses of spam traps.  When the services send welcome messages, they get put on blacklists.  (A similar trick was performed a few years ago, when Unsubscribe messages, with return addresses on the honeypot lists were sent to thousands of mail lists.  The mail lists responded with "You are not subscribed" notes, and they all got blacklisted by SpamHaus.

Agreed with Ray 're: db controlled sends.

... because daddy loves cron jobs.

I have crons setup to send up to 500/hr - one cron for each hour, in case something stops.

I also keep track of what is sent out.

I'm most interested in knowing if I need to pace the messages or just send them all at once.
Any thoughts on that would be helpful.

Thank you.

Who is your hosting provider?  Ask them if you should pace the messages.  They will be the only ones who are likely to care.

whitehouse.gov, Facebook, and others do not have to worry about one little client causing them to be blacklisted.  They have their own servers (many of them) and their own connections to the internet that are better than most local ISPs.  Gmail and Godaddy and my local ISP all have limits on email sent thru their servers.

Still, the main thing is to ask.  All those with limits typically just drop your emails when you reach their limits without any warning message.

Ray:

Re: Facebook / Whitehouse - I was exaggerating to make a point :-)

From a mail standpoint, it doesn't matter if you are sending from multiple IPs (multiple servers) if the content and return paths trigger the spam buttons, they are spam.

There are limits ONLY if you are relaying via a smart host. (Godaddy, Gmail, your ISP are smarthosts). If you have a mailserver that sends mail directly, there are no limits.

With 200,000 users, I would assume he is running a dedicated server (or at least should be), and that he would not be routing via a smarthost.

@USA: Is this a dedicated server or a shared service? Is exim configured to route mail using DNS or a smarthost?

This is a dedicated server.

I do have DKIM setup -- not sure that SPFcomes into play when I have DKIM setup.  Do I need to be concerned with SPFin my case ?

Also, the explanations I'm hearing about speed is encouraging.  I agree that I suspected that pace of email should not be factored and would hold up tons and tons of messages if major sites were concerned about getting their mail out in a timely fashion.

I don't like pacing the mail cause it's taking foreverrrrrrrrrrrrr

You need to configure DKIM and SPF on your server.

Also I recomend you to read this guideline
http://urbanmarketingnetwork.com/blog/index.php/2009/03/13/improve-mass-email-deliverablity-the-long-way/
https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81126
http://postmaster.aol.com/Postmaster.Guidelines.php
https://dub114.mail.live.com/mail/postmaster.aspx

Ok, so have these suggestions provided the guidence needed to resolve your question?

Also you can play with throttling roles
http://wiki.spry.com/Throttling_exim