On 11/4/2011 7:44 PM, Noah wrote: > I have problems with a lot of memory needed for indexing my mbox by > dovecot and wondering if I transitioned from mbox to Maildir if that > would help with the indexing processing? If so is there a good tutorial > for moving postfix from mbox to Maildir?
It sounds like you're using the standard Postfix local(8) delivery agent for delivery to your mbox mailboxen. When you launch your MUA and it connects, Dovecot must re-index the mbox file(s) when they contain new mail. The same is true for maildir mailboxes. I'm guessing this is when you are seeing high memory consumption and some latency when the mailbox loads. If lots of mail has been written since the mailbox was last opened by Dovecot, the re-indexing can take considerable time and memory. I had similar problems long ago until I discovered dovecot-lda, the Dovecot local deliver agent. Dovecot-lda automatically indexes new mail as it arrives, using scant resources to do so. Thus when you launch your MUA there is no indexing to do, saving time, memory, and disk access. The solution to your problem is probably as simple as switching Postfix to use dovecot-lda. Instructions for Dovecot 1.x are here: http://wiki.dovecot.org/LDA/Postfix Instructions for Dovecot 2.x are here: http://wiki2.dovecot.org/LDA/Postfix Another benefit of using dovecot-lda is access to the sieve plugin: http://wiki.dovecot.org/LDA/Sieve http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole?action=show&redirect=LDA%2FSieve This enables mail sorting/filtering during delivery. Since this sorting is done by Dovecot at delivery time, it negates the need for MUA side rules, and thus cuts down on server load. -- Stan
