[Dovecot] imaptest: performance testing

[Timo Sirainen]

On 16.3.2012, at 12.08, Nick Urbanik wrote:

> Using head of imaptest with dovecot 2.1, I am attempting to put a
> heavy load on the server, with insufficient success.
> 
> I made 15000 user accounts, put them in to a file, one per line.  Then
> I ran imaptest with
> 
> ./imaptest userfile=../../imap-test-userlist-15001.txt clients=15001
> pass=SECRETPASSWORD

A single imaptest process can't handle that many simultaneous clients. You'd need to run multiple imaptests in parallel.

> So what is the best way to put a really heavy load on an imap server?
> The documentation describes testing correctness of the server without
> really emphasising performance.

Yes, imaptest is mainly meant to test server correctness (i.e. for me to test that Dovecot is bugfree). It spends a lot of time checking and tracking things that is irrelevant when you simply want to load the server. You could add no_tracking parameter to get rid of some of it.