[Dovecot] unofficial Survey about your Dovecot server :) to compare with my own server setup...

[Petar Bogdanovic]

Representing the low-end.. ;)

Server:          Self-assembled.
Board/CPU:       Via EPIA-5000 / 500Mhz
RAM:             512MB
Users:           1
OS:              NetBSD 3.0
Auth:            passwd
Mbx-size:        500MB
Dovecot:         1.0Beta5
Client-SW:       Thunderbird 1.5 / mutt


When I'm moving mails, dovecot takes up to 10% of the CPU-time.


Flavio Domingos wrote:
> Hi Borthers/Sisters
> 
> Thanks for all the developer(s) and for all the hard work spent on build 
> this great piece of software! I loved Dovecot since it is really easy to 
> set up and really fast but I am really new to it (only 2 weeks and 
> half). Right now, our server configuration is:
> 
> Server: Apple Xserve G5 dual
> RAM: 4GB
> Number of Users: ~ 150 IMAP only users
> Authentication: LDAP
> Mailboxes sizes: ~200GB
> Dovecot version: 1.0 Beta 5  (I am looking forward to beta 7 that was 
> released today)
> Email client software: mostly Thunderbird 1.5
> 
> 
> Right now, we are experiencing occasional problem with imap users unable 
> to connect to the server. With beta 3, we had to restart the 
> dovecot/imap processes almost every 3 hours. with Dovecot beta5 we still 
> have to restart the processes but it seems to occur every 3 days (Friday 
> and Yesterday) and only in a peak time (around 3pm). I am waiting to 
> occur it again and I will be able to grab more information about the 
> number of processes, users, virtual memory, etc, etc. So, at this point, 
> I don't have much information to debug the problem. Let's wait.
> 
> I guess we have here a nice machine (xserve) and not a huge number of 
> users (~150). So, I would expect that our server would handle the load. 
> But having to restart Dovecot once a while, as I described, is not an 
> option (users are getting frustrated). :(   Maybe with Beta 7 with the 
> feature "Added shutdown_clients setting to control if existing imap/pop3 
> processes should be killed when master is" can stop our nightmares :)
> 
> By the way, our dovecot.conf is basically the default sent with the 
> software. We haven't changed much there!
> 
> Meanwhile, I'd like to know, if possible, whar are you using to run 
> Dovecot like hardware, OS version, number of users and problems that you 
> are experiencing. I'd like to compare with my setup and if it is the 
> case, migrate to pure Linux or FreeBSD if it is more stable than OS/X!
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Flavio Domingos
> - San Francisco/CA -