[Dovecot] login_processes_count & login_max_processes_count question

[Timo Sirainen]

On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 07:58 -0600, Ken A wrote:
> re:
> 
> > # Maximum number of login processes to create. The listening 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 the limit set by
> > # this setting is reached.
> > #login_max_processes_count = 128
> 
> If the server is attacked by a password guessing routine, or just gets 
> very busy, and login process count reaches 128, will the created 
> processes ever get killed, or will dovecot continue to run 128 processes 
> until it's restarted?

The "wanted process count" is decreased by one every second if there are
non-busy login processes. Whenever a user logs in, Dovecot just doesn't
create a new login process if the current count is larger than wanted
count. So the count does eventually drop down.
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