dovecot - Mar 2006 - Too many links

Hi all,

I've a problem during a big migration to dovecot.

I'm not sure that is a really a dovecot bug ... but maybe somebody  
here know
one solution ...

I have more than 150000 imap account to migrate from an obscure mail  
system
based on a database to an imap/dovecot system.

During the migration (simple but very long process) I get a "Too many  
links" error
from dovecot.

This error is not obscure but I'm unable to find a solution with this  
error on google.

I kown the /proc/sys/fs/file-max for increase the number of open  
file, but it's not the
problem here.

This probleme occure with more than 130000 directory and more than  
350000 file.

Have you an idea ?

Thank,

Cyril Feraudet

On Wednesday 29 Mar 2006 10:22, Feraudet Cyril wrote:
>
> During the migration (simple but very long process) I get a "Too many
> links" error
> from dovecot.
> Have you an idea ?
I think this is a limit on the Linux VFS structures. I don't know how to
tune
it, or if it is tunable upwards in a simple fashion.

The problem is when you have more than 31998 in an ext2 file system.

http://lists.svlug.org/pipermail/svlug/2001-December/038824.html

Since there are underlying structures with similar limits, it will likely 
affect many file systems,  although you may get closed to 32768 before it 
fails.

Probably best to use a hierarchical naming strategy to avoid so many 
directories at the same level in the 
tree; /var/spool/mail/domain/us/er/username

Hans Reiser has commented the underlying limits make his file system look bad, 
although he didn't put it that brutally.