On Tue, 2007-01-23 at 09:29 -0500, Justin McAleer wrote:
So, what does my dovecot setup need to be? I've seen some people say they disable indexing in the LDA, but allow pop/imap to index. Some say the attribute cache needs to be disabled, which I'd think would be worse than just disabling indexes. Some say indexes should be kept on local disk (dedicated server for users), and others seem to report problems even when doing so. Is there a general consensus?
I don't think there are any problems with keeping indexes in local disk, other than what generic index file bugs there may be.
I was also wondering if dovecot's sanity checking on the indexes would allow each server in a balanced group to keep indexes on local disk (so if the maildir has changed on another server, dovecot rebuilds it).
Yes, it would.
If so, does that take away all performance gains from having indexes at all?
If the server changes often, probably..
I think your possibilities are (best performance -> lowest performance):
a) Try to redirect the users into the same server always, so that you can keep indexes in local disks.
b) Try to redirect the users into the same server, but keep index files in NFS. You don't need to disable attribute cache, as long as you're not redirecting the same user into two different servers at the same time (or within NFS attribute cache TTL more exactly).
c) Disable index files and redirect the users wherever.