[Dovecot] Problems with the pop3 part of dovecot

[Brandon Lamb]

Hello,

I originally just typed up a 5 paragraph essay on my problems but just
deleted it all.

basically I need to find out where to start looking to find out what
is the problem with my dovecot pop3 setup. I switched from courier
imap/pop3 to dovecot imap/pop3. I have had super high loads (40+ and
overnight one server went to 511) and its been a nightmare fighting
with this new setup for the last two weeks.

I did manage to narrow the problem down to it being with the pop3 part
of dovecot. I am not sure why the load keeps going so high. The first
week I attributed it to users having to redownload mail and reindex
(we were aware of the UIDL problem), but two weeks later one of my
machines overnight went to 511. I have changed so many config options
to try to make it work that I have become overwhelmed and feel like I
have tried everything to get the right settings.

I am running four 64bit machines with amd 9850 cpus, 4 gigs ram, the
mailstore is nfs mounted, the nfs server is using xfs. Debian
lenny/sid.

I dont know what to do, I am almost debating going back to courier
pop3 and going through the week of support calls of customers
downloading mail again but that is a last ditch effort. I can
understand if i just need to wait it out while things are indexed for
dovecot and stuff, but machines falling over and loads of 40 to 500
just for dovecot seems not right.

so, where do I start?