Hi, I originally picked mdbox because I had the impression from reading about it on the mailing list that it was more performant and that it would conserve disc space.
But lately i found mailboxes have nearly double the storage as reported.
I mean, IMAP QUOTA reports around 900MB for one account that has over
2GB when I inspect the mail location of the user using the linux command
du
Another account has around 750MB according to IMAP but using du I find 1.5GB. This is for message files and index files combined.
Is this normal? I tried to read the MailboxFormat/dbox wiki page and it does not directly address this topic but it does reference "doveadm purge". Do I need to use "doveadm purge"?
On 03 Feb 2019, at 22:07, MRob mrobti@insiberia.net wrote:
Hi, I originally picked mdbox because I had the impression from reading about it on the mailing list that it was more performant and that it would conserve disc space.
But lately i found mailboxes have nearly double the storage as reported. I mean, IMAP QUOTA reports around 900MB for one account that has over 2GB when I inspect the mail location of the user using the linux command
duAnother account has around 750MB according to IMAP but using du I find 1.5GB. This is for message files and index files combined.
Is this normal? I tried to read the MailboxFormat/dbox wiki page and it does not directly address this topic but it does reference "doveadm purge". Do I need to use "doveadm purge"?
From https://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/dbox:
Expunging a message only decreases the message's refcount. The space is later freed in "purge" step.
Mails are not directly removed from disk. You should probably setup the nightly cronjob to clean your mailbox. Check the mailbox size once after running doveadm purge.
Philon
On 2019-02-03 21:12, Philon wrote:
On 03 Feb 2019, at 22:07, MRob mrobti@insiberia.net wrote:
Hi, I originally picked mdbox because I had the impression from reading about it on the mailing list that it was more performant and that it would conserve disc space.
But lately i found mailboxes have nearly double the storage as reported. I mean, IMAP QUOTA reports around 900MB for one account that has over 2GB when I inspect the mail location of the user using the linux command
duAnother account has around 750MB according to IMAP but using du I find 1.5GB. This is for message files and index files combined.
Is this normal? I tried to read the MailboxFormat/dbox wiki page and it does not directly address this topic but it does reference "doveadm purge". Do I need to use "doveadm purge"?
From https://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/dbox:
Expunging a message only decreases the message's refcount. The space is later freed in "purge" step.
Thats what I read but I had a hard time to believe I could understand it was a critical maintenance because it was not highlighted in the docs.
I ran purge and find now "du" reporting about 60% the size of IMAP QUOTA so mdbox now is saving space and I'm very happy for Dovecot again is good software. But may I ask developers it is not common belief of administrators to know they must purge message storage - can you please make this a warning in highlight and big text on the mailformat documentation? I think this is a ciritcal oversight
PS for 10.000+ users how heavy is this process on performance? what if 100.000+ users?
participants (2)
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MRob
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Philon