[Dovecot] Solaris/SSLonly/Lots of Users

[Jeff A. Earickson]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Steven F Siirila wrote:

> Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:26:45 -0600
> From: Steven F Siirila <sfs at tc.umn.edu>
> To: dovecot at dovecot.org
> Subject: [Dovecot] Solaris/SSLonly/Lots of Users
> 
> Anyone running Dovecot on Solaris, requiring only SSL connections, and
> servicing thousands of simultaneous users?  Our past attempts to do so
> have failed due to dovecot-auth using up all 256 of its file descriptors.
> I say 256 since we are limited to that by the 32-bit libraries.
> We are looking at either compiling Dovecot in 64-bit and letting dovecot-auth
> file descriptors accumulate (not ideal), or providing Timo with access to
> one of our test servers so he can debug the problem.  However, I would
> like to hear of anyone in the same boat first.  Thanks!
>
Hi,

Our situation: Solaris 10 (sparc), rc23 compiled with gcc, 3K users,
imap and imaps (no pop).  I often had problems with the "too many
open files" issue back in beta versions of dovecot.  I kept boosting
the "login_max_processes_count" and "login_max_connections" numbers
(quadrupled both from the default) and still had problems.  I finally
got rid of it by setting "login_process_per_connection = no".  The
problem vanished.

This was when I was running dovecot on a Sun E220R, and it could not
really keep up -- high load, slow response, etc.  I upgraded the
hardware to a T2000 (8 cpu) about a month ago, and it barely breaks
a sweat.  I haven't changed the settings above back to the defaults,
because I am afraid of breaking things again.

Timo, any idea what would happen if I set things back to the default
in this case?

Jeff Earickson
Colby College