Bruce Bodger wrote:

On Jun 8, 2009, at 4:17 PM, Scott Haneda wrote:

...

Thanks, I have been looking at those adjustments. My concern, is that if Dovecot uses a process per imap or pop connection, 2048 is not nearly enough for any significant email system.

There are several parameters in dovecot.conf that can be adjusted to prevent the problem that you're concerned about...

Should each login be processed in it's own process (yes), or should one

login process be allowed to process multiple connections (no)? Yes

is more

secure, espcially with SSL/TLS enabled. No is faster since there's

no need

to create processes all the time.

login_process_per_connection = no

Maximum number of login processes to create. The listening process

count

usually stays at login_processes_count, but when multiple users

start logging

in at the same time more extra processes are created. To prevent

fork-bombing

we check only once in a second if new processes should be created -

if all

of them are used at the time, we double their amount until the limit

set by

this setting is reached.

login_max_processes_count = 128

This only partly addresses the concern.

There will still be a process per IMAP or POP connection once the connection is logged in. I believe those settings only control what happens until a successful authentication.

David