On 21.3.2005, at 13:32, Gabriel Granger wrote:
Closing the email client doesn't kill the process, it does sometimes but normally have to wait a while (5mins or more). When you refer to CPU load are you talking about on the server itself? if so I don't believe it is. I will check next time this happens.
Or the load in general? That sounds like Dovecot is busy re-reading the mbox file.
My largest users mailbox file is 200Mb with the total disk space used by all their mail folders is 6GB. Is there any information regarding limits on what is a safe maximum size for a mailbox folder? I try to get my users to keep their inboxes under 200 messages or 50Mb.
Currently I'm gettting my heavy users to reduce their inboxes from 150Mb down to something sensible. ..The users get the "loading message" or "opening messages" and the egg timer goes round but never completes. I managed to clear the problem by getting the user to close their email client and then kill their IMAP processes on the server, when the user logs in again the client responds correctly.
OK, sounds like a new message has arrived to mbox and Dovecot re-reads the whole mbox which takes a while. Although Dovecot 1.0-stable doesn't anymore re-read the mbox as long as it's selected.. Maybe the clients open another connection to server which.. Try setting:
mbox_very_dirty_syncs = yes