On Tuesday 26 April 2005 14:58, Jon wrote:

Hi,

Im using dovecote as my IMAP interface. However i do have a lot of imap instances. its only 7 user using the system as i get this. please advice.

Having lots of processes running isn't automatically a bad thing, but you do seem to have quite a lot of imap and imap-login processes, so:

From a dovecot.conf on a server I run being used by about 7 people: (Comments are from dovecot-sample.conf)

# 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

So if security is less of a concern than having many processes running, you should set this to no.

# Number of login processes to create. If login_process_per_user is # yes, this is the number of extra processes waiting for users to log in. login_processes_count = 1

I set this low because I don't need the extra processes.

# Maximum number of extra login processes to create. The extra 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 # limit set by this setting is reached. This setting is used only if # login_process_per_use is yes. #login_max_processes_count = 128

You might want to set this to something like 4?

# Maximum number of connections allowed in login state. When this limit is # reached, the oldest connections are dropped. If login_process_per_user # is no, this is a per-process value, so the absolute maximum number of users # logging in actually login_processes_count * max_logging_users. #login_max_logging_users = 256

Probably no need to worry about this.

1230 ? S 0:00 imap-login 1309 ? S 0:00 imap-login

<snip>

2387 ? S 0:00 imap-login 3095 ? S 0:00 imap 3096 ? S 0:00 imap-login

/jon

Other things to think about:

Are the mailboxes being accessed via Webmail? What Mail application are your users using? Have you checked what state the connections are in?

HTH,

Dominic GoodforBusiness.co.uk I.T. Services for SMEs in the UK.