[Dovecot] DC testing observation and a question

[Scott Silva]

on 1-9-2009 10:16 AM Stewart Dean spake the following:
> I have been running a test DC IMAP server to evaluate the new release
> before migrating from 1.0.15 to 1.1.8.  The test server access all the
> INBOX and homedir folder filesystems through NFS imports.
> The index file filesystem is local on both the production server and the
> test one..  This is messy in that when I ask some one tests using the
> test sever, the index has to be created or re-gennned, since the local
> index either doesn't exist or is several months old (from the last time
> a prospective upgrade was tested) and thus doesn't reflect data on the
> production DC IMAP server.
> 
> 1) Watching the syslog maillog has been intriguing...different IMAP
> client show widely differently use patterns.
> a) Users running TBird and Seamonkey have 2-5 imap sessions (ps -aef |
> grep <userid>) *but* very little syslog activity...sparse occasional
> logins and disconnects
> b) Users running Exchange have only 1 imap sessions *but* every 5
> minutes will generate login and disconnect messages (in and out in the
> space of a second) for each folders.  So for a user with 22 folders,
> there will be 44 syslog messages in the maillog every 5 minutes.
> Just curious....any thought as to which is more efficient and by how much?
> 
> 2) When I try to switch a MacMail client over, it sees the new mail, but
> not the old mail in the INBOX.  How do I  force re-indexing on the test
> server?
By Exchange to you mean Outlook?

Outlook's (and Outlook Express) have poorly written IMAP implementations IMHO.
Outlook is first and foremost a client for an Exchange server, with somewhat
decent POP3 support. OE is just the POP3 and buggy IMAP.
Later versions added HTML support mainly to access hotmail.

They both seem to poll each folder for info instead of using IMAP calls.

I think the open but inactive connections are less of a load on a server then
the polling which would add to the I/O load, along with the syslog activity.

Just my opinion, though, and the usual disclaimers apply.

-- 
MailScanner is like deodorant...
You hope everybody uses it, and
you notice quickly if they don't!!!!

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