dovecot - May 2006 - Server settings for a busy server

Hi,

We are migrating from a windows server and i have very few stats as to
what our current concurrent usage stats are other than about 50,000
active users and 90,000 email messages a day inbound 20,000 outbound.

Anyone got some tips for tuning dovecot to handle this load?

Below is my config - do the values of login_process_size etc sound
correct? 
Also my logs seem to be written out as root which seems kind of scary do
how do I / should I have these written out by the dovecot user.

Any feedback greatfully accepted.

Regards,

Pat


protocols = imap pop3
listen = *
ssl_disable = no
disable_plaintext_auth = no
shutdown_clients = yes
log_path = /var/log/dovecot/mainlog
info_log_path = /var/log/dovecot/infolog
log_timestamp = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S "
login_dir = /var/run/dovecot/login
login_chroot = yes
login_user = dovecot
login_process_size = 256
login_process_per_connection = no
login_processes_count = 48
login_max_logging_users = 2048
login_greeting = Email server ready.
login_log_format_elements = user=<%u> method=%m rip=%r lip=%l %c
login_log_format = %$: %s
first_valid_uid = 100
mail_extra_groups = mail
valid_chroot_dirs = /var/vmail
mail_debug = no
default_mail_env = maildir:/var/vmail/dovecoterror/%domain/%u
maildir_copy_with_hardlinks = yes
protocol imap {
}
protocol pop3 {
  pop3_reuse_xuidl = no
  pop3_uidl_format =%u
  pop3_logout_format = top=%t/%p, retr=%r/%b, del=%d/%m, size=%s
  pop3_client_workarounds = outlook-no-nuls, oe-ns-eoh
}
auth_executable = /usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-auth
auth_verbose = yes
auth_debug = yes
auth_debug_passwords = yes
auth default {
  mechanisms = plain
  passdb pam {
  }
  passdb ldap {
    args = /etc/dovecot/dovecot-ldap.conf
  }
  userdb passwd {
  }
  userdb ldap {
    args = /etc/dovecot/dovecot-ldap.conf
  }
  user = root
}

 


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On Sat, 2006-05-27 at 13:29 +0100, Pat Hastings wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> We are migrating from a windows server and i have very few stats as to
> what our current concurrent usage stats are other than about 50,000
> active users and 90,000 email messages a day inbound 20,000 outbound.
> 
> Anyone got some tips for tuning dovecot to handle this load?
> 
> Below is my config - do the values of login_process_size etc sound
> correct? 
I guess they're good enough.
> Also my logs seem to be written out as root which seems kind of scary do
> how do I / should I have these written out by the dovecot user.
All logging currently goes through Dovecot's master process. This
shouldn't be a problem. In Dovecot 2.0 I plan to have separate logger
processes and make logging through them. Then they wouldn't necessarily
have to run as root.
> mail_extra_groups = mail
This probably isn't needed unless you have a good reason to use it.
> auth_executable = /usr/lib/dovecot/dovecot-auth
> auth_verbose = yes
> auth_debug = yes
> auth_debug_passwords = yes
> auth default {
>   mechanisms = plain
>   passdb pam {
>   }
>   passdb ldap {
>     args = /etc/dovecot/dovecot-ldap.conf
>   }
>   userdb passwd {
>   }
>   userdb ldap {
>     args = /etc/dovecot/dovecot-ldap.conf
>   }
>   user = root
> }
You could try auth_cache settings to see if they reduce the load even
more. And if you want to cache PAM lookups also then you'd need to set
cache_key parameter for it.

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