[Dovecot] dovecot evaluation on a 30 gb mailbox

[Eric Shubert]

Pascal Volk wrote:
> On 06/23/2010 01:22 PM Rajesh M wrote:
>> 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
> 
> Hm, I can't see a auth master socket in your pasted configuration. (BTW:
> send only `dovecot -n` output.) So I guess, you let Qmail store the
> messages into the Maildir.
> If you would use deliver, Dovecot's LDA <http://wiki.dovecot.org/LDA>,
> deliver would keep your index files up to date. This should reduce the
> delay at login time.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Pascal

Not that it matters, but I think Pascal's correct about this.

Rajesh, can you give dovecot's 'deliver' a go? Let us know if you need a 
hand with that. Oh, and try to take good notes. ;)

-- 
-Eric 'shubes'