[Dovecot] Mount options and NFS: just checking...

[Timo Sirainen]

On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 12:54 +0100, Mike Brudenell wrote:
> We will have a pair of Solaris 10 servers on which Dovecot 1.0.3 is  
> running.  Users are normally directed to their "preferred" server  
> but, if it is unavailable, will go via the other server.
> 
> Q1.  Am I right in thinking that for the Message Store and Control Files
>       I should NFS-mount both of them with the "actimeo=0"?

Since files in message store don't change, actimeo=0 isn't really
needed, although if other servers are adding mails to maildirs then it
does make noticing new mails faster.

For control files actimeo=0 is needed for now.

>       (Or would "noac" be better, which also turns off client write- 
> caching
>       as well as the attribute cache?)

If you're not using fsync_disable then write caching shouldn't be a
problem.

> Q2.  Should I NFS-mount either or both of the Message Store and  
> Control Files
>       with the "noxattr" option to turn off extended attributes?

No idea. Dovecot doesn't use them, so I don't think it breaks anything,
but does it give any benefits?

> Q3.  Which of the filestores should I mount with the "noatime" option?
> A3.  Safe to use "noatime" for all three filestores.
>       (I understand Dovecot will use utime() when needed on such  
> filestores,
>       but am not sure if it will work on the NFS-mounted filestores  
> from the
>       filer if access times are turned off at the filer end.)

If your kernel caches atime updates locally, then maybe you shouldn't
use noatime for message store until v1.1. It doesn't cause real
problems, but Dovecot wastes time looking for old files in tmp/
directories all the time.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20070801/c43d3875/attachment.bin