On Tue, 2006-04-25 at 10:35, Daniel Watts wrote:
Now the problem is, we have to use the tranditional mbox format with dovecot, as it does not support indexed mbox format, which makes deleting messages costly. Also the long-time file locking (due to the slow operation on the dovecot side) causes our MTA (exim, by the way) holds a huge queue. That drives up the system load to mad (load average above 500 is not unusual in our case).
sorry just have to ask - does your server actually WORK at loads of 500? What kind of usage have you got?
ever thought on maildir?
OP said he has - and the reason he wants MBX support is to support writing and reading of LOTS of SMALL emails. maildir overhead from creation of new files for each email, allegedly, makes it less efficient than a single file MBX.
Unless, of course, you delete one of those small emails which with mbox format involves copying the entire remaining content into a temporary file and back or with mbox copying the subsequent messages backwards to close the hole. A filesystem that is efficient at file creation (reiserfs/xfs) probably makes more sense.
-- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com