[Dovecot] Thunderbird very slow startup, 1.2.11, mbox, postfix local delivery to /var/mail

[Stan Hoeppner]

Charles Marcus put forth on 5/7/2010 9:36 PM:
> On 5/7/2010 5:55 PM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>> According to this page found via Google it's disabled by default:
>> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Using_Gloda
>>
>> The page last update is listed as 7 March 2009.  I'm not sure which
>> version
>> was current at that time.  But obviously it was disabled by default at
>> one
>> point.  That may have changed.  I didn't see it in the 3.0.4 release
>> notes.
>>   I may have manually enabled it long ago, not realizing the possible
>> repercussions, and then forgot I enabled it.  Like I said, I don't
>> think I
>> did, but it's possible.
> 
> Nope - it is definitely enabled by default - that page is outdated/wrong.
> 
> Believe me - there were a lot of complaints about it, mine especially.

Understood Charles.  I didn't think I had enabled it manually, and this
tends to confirm that.

Unfortunately the problem I originally described in this thread still isn't
solved.  When I just sat down and fired up Tbird I had 125 new messages.
Tbird once again demonstrated the slow "loading" behavior.  It took about 20
seconds to pull these 125 new messages.  As I said previously, it took about
1 minute to pull 300 the other day.  But with GLODA now disabled, the
sorting into my imap folders was near instantaneous, whereas before it took
a little bit longer to sort them.

What is so darn strange is that after I deleted all the index and cache from
my Tbird profile yesterday, Tbird downloaded the 11,000+ headers from my
debian-users and spam-l dovecot imap folders in about 15 each seconds.  Yet
it takes 20 seconds to grab headers of 125 new messages?  The math doesn't
work out.

AFAIK, the only difference between the two scenarios is that new messages
are stored in /var/mail and already existing messages are stored in
/home/stan/mail.  AFAIK, new message header info for those in /var/mail
isn't indexed by dovecot until after a request by the client.  When the
client requests headers from mail in other imap folders, dovecot grabs those
headers from its index files, which should be quicker, though I don't know
how much quicker it should be.

So the question is, is this slow loading of new messages in Tbird a problem
with Tbird itself, or is there a dovecot component to this slowness?  In
other words, is dovecot lagging in grabbing the header information from new
messages in /var/mail since they haven't been indexed yet?

If this is the case, if I switch from having Postfix do local delivery to
/var/mail to having Postfix use dovecot LDA, what other changes would I need
to make?  Would I still be able to sort new messages with Tbird filter
rules?  What directory would dovecot LDA drop the new messages into?  Would
I need to make name space changes?  I've never actually done anything
manually with name spaces.  I let dovecot figure it out automagically.

Thanks for the interest in my topic.  I know it's not a very interesting one
since apparently I'm the only one on the planet experiencing this.

-- 
Stan