Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 17:24:45 -0400 From: Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Cc: Aaron <aaron@justaaron.com> Subject: Re: mail access to second disk slow Message-ID: <3EC5571D.6060601@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <2274.204.32.207.74.1053117673.squirrel@webmail.pair.com> References: <2274.204.32.207.74.1053117673.squirrel@webmail.pair.com>
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Aaron wrote: [ ... ] > To date, I have tried: > - MozillaMail via Imap to my bsd disk (great) > - MozillaMail via Imap to my W2K disk (sux) > - Pine via Imap to my bsd disk (great-ish) > - Pine via Imap to my W2K disk (sux) > - Pine directly to the mbox folders on my W2K disk (sux) > > Note that both Pine and imap-uw (the imap I'm using) are produced by the > University of Washington, and both use the cclient utilities, also produced > by the U of W. Which may explain why Pine directly to mbox folders sux. The c-client routines perform extensive file locking in the hopes of supporting concurrent access to mailboxes via IMAP in a platform-independant fashion. > I got the bright idea of using mailx -f /one/of/my/w2k/folders, and the > response was *immediate*. I seriously doubt mailx knows what cclient is. Right. And if you change something via mailx while the same mailbox is open by an imapd, you're very likely to corrupt the mailbox. [ ... ] > I did this with MozillaMail via Imap to my w2k folders. CPU seemed to go > up 10 or 20%, and MozillaMail rose to the top of the % of usage, meanwhile I'm just > hanging there waiting. imapd stayed at zero the whole time I was waiting (minutes). > Finally the folder listed its messages, and imapd briefly climbed to 2nd > or 3rd place, then dropped back down into oblivion and from that point on I can > access the folder fine. Until I try the next folder, same scenario. That sounds like imapd was trying to grab the lock for a mailbox, timed out after default of two minutes or so and stole the lock, and then repeated the process. This might also mean that the locking mechanism imapd is trying to use isn't working right on a FAT filesystem. [ ... ] > Would anyone recommend one of the other imap servers? Remember, this is > for internal service on a 2 box lan, no external mail serving, so it > should be fairly simple to administer and lightweight-ish. Most of the other IMAP software, things like Cyrus, are going to be much more complex to deal with than imap-uw. > Also, it should be able to use mbox folders, so I can preserve the ability > to access them directly as described above. Direct access is fast because you don't have to lock. Direct access is risky unless you kill off any imapd's and prevent new connections before making changes. Do you need to have the mailboxes on a FAT partition (why?), or can you put them on UFS...? -Chuck
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