[Dovecot] Tools to analyze status/stats?

[Stewart Dean]

Much of my aggravations with user use/misuse/stupidity traces back to 
this simple fact: there is rarely any feedback mechanism in server apps 
to indicate to the user the loads their practices cause.  It is as if 
they were driving a car without a gas gauge, if they had bodies that 
didn't feel pain.
/I/ wish that there was some metric that could tell a user the composite 
CPU and memory loads their mail usage represents.  Of course, I'd also 
want the in-the-plans quota representation so that there is storage 
feedback as well.  Will it work with the Berkely quota?

wolff wrote:

> Thanks for the info... I will check sendmail/procmail more to see if i 
> can idenfity anything.
>  
> As far as tools or reports, I was thinking if I could look at the 
> following things I could get a good idea of the status/health of my 
> mailserver/imap server...
>  
> - The number of messages per date range, per user, received, delivered 
> to each user mail box, and undeliverable messages
> - The number of messages for unknown users or which had any sort of 
> delivery problem
> - Any error messages dovecot might produce communicating with the mta.
>  
> I guess the latter would be in my log files somewhere...I've found log 
> entries identifying the starting/stopping of dovecot, but haven't come 
> across any other messages (which I assume is a good thing and that the 
> system is working just fine... and also because I am getting mail ...:-))
>  
> Regards,
>
> Gary Wolff
>
>
>  
> On 12/5/05, *Curtis Maloney* <cmaloney at cardgate.net 
> <mailto:cmaloney at cardgate.net>> wrote:
>
>     wolff wrote:
>     > Hello,
>     >
>     > I recently installed dovecot on a server running Debian.
>     >
>     > I only have 10 users, but we probably have 6Gig of email between us.
>
>     We have only about 20 users, and store around 23 to 25G of
>     mail.  And that's
>     mostly because I was tyrannical about people keeping their
>     mailboxes lean until
>     we got a new HDD :)
>
>     > Things were working flawlessly for a couple of weeks, and I'm
>     still getting
>     > email, but the last few days we are getting fewer emails that we
>     typically
>     > do.
>     > So although things seem to be working well, everyone is
>     suspicious something
>     > is wrong due to the lack of email volume.
>     >
>     > Is there a size limit that dovecot can manage?
>
>     That's mostly dependent on your file system, since you're running
>     Maildir.  The
>     limits will be on "messages per folder" and "single file size",
>     both of which
>     you are unlikely to have reached.
>
>     > Are there any admin tools to get status messages for dovecot?
>
>     No, but that's not a bad idea.  What sort of features would you be
>     looking for?
>
>     > Are there any reporting tools to show how many messages are
>     > processed/managed by dovecot?
>
>     Well, there are a few options and patches that make it easier to
>     see how many
>     messages people are reading with Dovecot... but since it's the
>     _ingress_ of mail
>     you're suspecting, I'd be looking at your MTA logs (
>     sendmail/postfix/qmail/exim/whatever ) -- if the MTA isn't seeing
>     the mail,
>     there's no way Dovecot can, either.
>
>     --
>     Curtis Maloney
>     cmaloney at cardgate.net <mailto:cmaloney at cardgate.net>
>
>

-- 
====
Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, Henderson Computer Resources 
Center of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York  12504  
sdean at bard.edu  voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 845-758-7035