[Dovecot] dovecot evaluation on a 30 gb mailbox

[Rajesh M]

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> On Wed, 23 Jun 2010, Rajesh M wrote:
>
>>> Roundcube 0.3.1 seems to have a hard coded limit of 200 mails per page.
>
>> it again took around 4-5 mins
>
> I do not know nothing about Roundcube, therefore I wonder where the 5min
> delay come from:
>
> a) Do you keep index files on Dovecot side?
>
> b) Do you deliver / manipulate the mailbox via Dovecot only? E.g. do you
> use Dovecot deliver?
>
> c) If you rawlog or sniff the connection and issue the same commands as
> roundcube to Dovecot via, say, telnet next morning, is the delay the same?
> http://wiki.dovecot.org/Debugging/Rawlog
> http://wiki.dovecot.org/TestInstallation?highlight=%28telnet%29
>
> a) and b) should avoid rereading of the mailbox.
> c) is to ensure that Roundcube does not add the delay itself.
>
>> the extra 1000 emails were to be added to the cache .. does dovecot go
>> thru all the 170000 emails again to form the meta data ? or is there
>> some
>> cache expiry period ?
>
> Usually no.
>
> Regards,
>
> - --
> Steffen Kaiser
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hi

did the tests once again on this large email box

i set
maildir_very_dirty_syncs = yes
this was done in the morning and dovecot was restarted

i logged after about 4 hours after the previous login
again it took around 5 mins to login

i was monitoring my server load which around 1.5 - 2 on my dual core dual
xeon machine

this increased to around 8-9 during the login process

the no of emails in the box had increase by around 7500 emails

setting
maildir_very_dirty_syncs  = yes

does not seem to help

i have pasted below my dovecot.conf file

################

base_dir = /var/run/dovecot/
protocols = imap imaps
log_path = /backup1/qmaillog/dovecot.log
#ssl_disable = no
ssl_cert_file = /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem
ssl_key_file = /var/qmail/control/servercert.pem
ssl_cipher_list = djdjjd
verbose_ssl = yes

protocol imap {
listen = *:143
ssl_listen = *:993
        }
## Login processes
#login_dir = /usr/local/var/run/dovecot/login
login_user = dovecot
login_process_per_connection = no
login_processes_count = 3
login_process_size = 128
login_max_processes_count = 512
login_greeting = Ready
#login_log_format_elements = user=<%u> method=%m rip=%r lip=%l %c

## Mailbox locations and namespaces
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
namespace private {

    separator = .
    prefix = INBOX.
    inbox = yes
}
# Mail processes
verbose_proctitle = yes
first_valid_uid = 89
last_valid_uid = 89

# Maximum number of running mail processes. When this limit is reached,
max_mail_processes = 200

# Set max. process size in megabytes. Most of the memory goes to mmap()ing
# files, so it shouldn't harm much even if this limit is set pretty high.
mail_process_size = 256

## Maildir-specific settings
maildir_very_dirty_syncs = yes

## Authentication processes
disable_plaintext_auth = yes

auth default {
    mechanisms = plain login digest-md5 cram-md5
    passdb vpopmail {
    args = webmail=127.0.0.1
    }
    userdb vpopmail {
    }
    user = vpopmail
    count = 1
    ssl_require_client_cert = no
    }
################

thanks
rajesh