[Dovecot] Creating an IMAP repo for ~100 users need some advice

Sven Hartge sven at svenhartge.de
Sun Mar 18 17:19:38 EET 2012


Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> wrote:
> On 18.3.2012, at 0.28, Sven Hartge wrote:

>> mbox has big problems with concurrent writes, the bigger the mbox is,
>> the more problems you get. This is mainly caused by the meta-data of
>> a message (meaning flags, status, etc.) which is stored inside the
>> mbox file itself. Flagging a message as read or replied causes the
>> whole mbox file to be rewritten.

> Dovecot moves only minimal amount of data within mbox. A flag change
> writes only a few bytes to mbox file, it doesn't rewrite it the whole
> file. Only time when the entire mbox file is rewritten is when you
> expunge the first message.

OK, then my memory was clouded by my exposure to the brokenness of
uw-imapd and uw-popd, who rewrite an mbox file very often, resulting in
abysmal performance.

Grüße,
Sven.

-- 
Sigmentation fault. Core dumped.



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