IE 5.00 Browser Timeout

Anon

When running the program that sends out my subscription newsletter, my browser gives a "Cannot Find Server or DNS Error" about 6 minutes into execution (there are a couple of thousand subscribers). The program sends the mail OK but never displays the "success" html page since the browser times out.

How can I keep the browser from timing out?

Thanks

Eric

Anon

set_time_limit(0);

Anon

Thanks, but
set_time_limit(0);
did not help. The program did run to completion (10 minutes), but the browser 404 error comes up at 6 minutes into execution. Any other ideas?

Anon

Eric,

I have had similar problemns in long lasting scripts, and have sovled them (partly) by having my script output somethinhg to the browser with regular intervals.

Make sure that the browser can render what it gets - that it's not trapped in an unfinished table or something.

That might help you too.

BTW: mailing bulk from PHP is a pain! It's too slow to be useful. You might also consider outputting the mails - or just the address list - to a faster bulk mailing program.

Martin

Anon

Have your browser based script do little more than configure the mail blast parameter and start the timer on a cron job. Then have the php mailer script send you an email when it succeeds or fails....

Then you don't have to sit and wait for it, just check your email in 10 minutes to get your results....

Anon

First of all thank you very much for your reply.

That said, I am not sure how to "output something to the browser with regular intervals". I tried moving my html "sucess" echo before the mailing starts, but the browser is waiting until the mail is finished before printing the html. I was surprised at this, since I thought the browser would go ahead and print the html, then the mail would run in the background.

//my pseudocode

//print success html page
//send mail

I was surprised the html did not print until the mail was completed. Any ideas?

Anon

Eric,

What I have done in the few instances where I wantede to send off a bunch of mails, was split them up into a handful of smaller groups (20-40 each) and send them off in a loop. Each iteration of the loop reported back to me. It worked. I would prefer using a maling program, a cron job (which I don't know how to do) or similar and output in a burst and have another process handle it in the background.

Martin