[Dovecot] Zlib plugin - when does it make sense?

[Frerich Raabe]

On 2013-11-25 14:35, Jan-Frode Myklebust wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 09:53:14AM +0100, Frerich Raabe wrote:
>>
>> I run a small IMAP server for a dozen guys in the office, serving
>> about 55GB of Maildir. I recently became aware of the Zlib plugin (
>> http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Plugins/Zlib ) and wondered
>>
>> 1. given that there is about zero CPU load on my IMAP server, is
>> enabling the plugin a no-brainer or are there other things (except
>> CPU load) to consider?
>
> Yes, it's a no-brainer. I can't remember how the cpuload was before 
> we
> enabled zlib, but our cpus are running 80% idle (6 servers, mix of 
> IBM
> x3550 and x346, serving 15TB mdbox, but was serving maildir with zlib 
> a
> year ago).

Interesting! What zlib compression level did you use? I figure even low
levels would work rather well for plain text.

Now that I think about "plain text": I also have the fts_solr plugin
enabled to speed up the occasional full-text search - does the indexing
still work as before when the mail is compressed, i.e. is the
reading of the mail centralized so that the individual plugins don't
actually know or care? Or would I need to make sure I use
'zlib-aware' plugins?

-- 
Frerich Raabe - raabe at froglogic.com
www.froglogic.com - Multi-Platform GUI Testing