dovecot - Jun 2009 - Login processes in Dovecot

I will be deploying Dovecot on OS X shortly.  I am looking for  
clarification on the limits imposed by OS X and sysctl  
[kern.maxproc].  I understand that it is defaulting to 532, but can be  
raised to 2500.  I believe the OS uses around 100 or so, plus I will  
have other processes and shells at times.

Does Dovecot use one process per user logged in?  I find Apple Mail  
uses about 4 IMAP connections per account.  I am not sure that my  
current number of mail users would be able to be supported on OS X  
even if I bump up to 2500.

Does Dovecot use one process per user logged in differently based on  
IMAP versus POP?  Perhaps this is something that can also be changed  
in Dovecot, if so, can someone point me to the docs about it, or  
explain the downsides of going against default behavior.

If this is the case, what are my options?  Does OS X server have a  
higher limit in their kernel, or is this across the board?  Is it even  
possible to compile a kernel for OS X with this change, or does that  
generally mess things up pretty bad?

FreeBSD and Solaris seem to have much higher limits, and certainly a  
much more approachable way of upping those limits.  Does anyone know  
why OS X chose to set these so low, especially given that they do sell  
server based hardware with a server based OS.

Thanks.
-- 
Scott * If you contact me off list replace talklists@ with scott@ *

On Jun 8, 2009, at 2:47 PM, Scott Haneda wrote:
> I will be deploying Dovecot on OS X shortly.  I am looking for  
> clarification on the limits imposed by OS X and sysctl  
> [kern.maxproc].  I understand that it is defaulting to 532, but can  
> be raised to 2500.  I believe the OS uses around 100 or so, plus I  
> will have other processes and shells at times.
Which version of OS X?  10.4 or 10.5 ?  Server or client ?   It matters.

B. Bodger

On Jun 8, 2009, at 1:03 PM, Bruce Bodger wrote:
> On Jun 8, 2009, at 2:47 PM, Scott Haneda wrote:
>
>> I will be deploying Dovecot on OS X shortly.  I am looking for  
>> clarification on the limits imposed by OS X and sysctl  
>> [kern.maxproc].  I understand that it is defaulting to 532, but can  
>> be raised to 2500.  I believe the OS uses around 100 or so, plus I  
>> will have other processes and shells at times.
>
> Which version of OS X?  10.4 or 10.5 ?  Server or client ?   It  
> matters.

My current target for deployment is a Dual 2.0 PPC G5, running OS X  
10.5 client.  Thank you.
-- 
Scott * If you contact me off list replace talklists@ with scott@ *