dovecot - Mar 2007 - Newbie index infrastructure and location questions

I've been lurking for a year or more and am now actually bringing 
Dovecot up (it seems that any time I make a serious effort at this, 
something else falls in the pot and I have to give it up yet again).
Index questions:
I understand the indices should be placed in a non-file-system-quoted 
place.  I have in mind to create /var/dcndx
1) Roughly how much space do indices take up (so I can size space for a 
directory for them)?  I have 4000 users, average mbox inbox size is 
5.5MB (totalling 22GB), the number of messages/user mailbox I'd guess to 
average around 100 and go as high as 5000.  They have maybe as much as 
3x times space and messages in folders, though I guess the average is 
about half that of INBOX
2) I'm clear that DC will automagically create the index files, but
a) do I have to create a subdirectory for each user, ex: /var/dcndx/user1
b) Is there one index file theat handles a user's mailbox and folders or 
a separate one for each?

-- 
===Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, Henderson Computer Resources 
Center of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York  12504  
sdean at bard.edu  voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 845-758-7035

On Wed, 2007-03-14 at 14:38 -0400, Stewart Dean wrote:
> I've been lurking for a year or more and am now actually bringing 
> Dovecot up (it seems that any time I make a serious effort at this, 
> something else falls in the pot and I have to give it up yet again).
> Index questions:
> I understand the indices should be placed in a non-file-system-quoted 
> place.  I have in mind to create /var/dcndx
> 1) Roughly how much space do indices take up (so I can size space for a 
> directory for them)?  I have 4000 users, average mbox inbox size is 
> 5.5MB (totalling 22GB), the number of messages/user mailbox I'd guess
to
> average around 100 and go as high as 5000.  They have maybe as much as 
> 3x times space and messages in folders, though I guess the average is 
> about half that of INBOX
Are they all IMAP users? dovecot.index.cache file's size depends heavily
on what kind of clients your users use. POP3 uses much less than IMAP.
I'd guess something like 20-30% of the mailbox size.
> 2) I'm clear that DC will automagically create the index files, but
> a) do I have to create a subdirectory for each user, ex: /var/dcndx/user1
As long as Dovecot has permissions to create the directory, it will.
> b) Is there one index file theat handles a user's mailbox and folders
or
> a separate one for each?
Separate files for each mailbox.

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