[Dovecot] extremely slow delete/move operations?

[Timo Sirainen]

On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 13:24 -0500, John Peacock wrote:
> Gregory K. Ruiz-Ade wrote:
> > The primary difference seems to be that we're using NFS here
> 
> <snip> 8<
> 
> > Mailbox formats are mbox.
> 
> Those are the two most important pieces of information in your message 
> (IMHO).  mbox is always slower than maildir when the filesize exceeds 
> the operating memory for the server (i.e. it cannot be mmapped).  NFS 
> will always be slower than "local" access, even on NetApp's supposed 
> 'high-performance' NFS.  The combination is deadly, since every message 
> stored in Trash requires copying the entire mbox file and appending the 
> new message, then deleting the original and renaming the new file in its 
> place.

Dovecot doesn't copy the entire mbox file though, it just appends the
new mail to it.

Anyway, I'd say the problem here has something to do with Dovecot being
v0.99.x. Also is the trash mailbox accessed by something else than
Dovecot? If that is done, 1.0beta with mbox_very_dirty_syncs=yes helps.