Hello I have a user with 2500+ sub folders. Total mailboxes size is around 6G. (mdbox, dovecot 2:2.0.14) Syncing/Receiving appears to be slow, with outlook 2007. He does not want to switch to an alternative, due to various reasons. I did not find any error logs indicate issues. during idle, imap process appears to loop at adding inotify watches to all folders. I found outlook-idle in wiki, but it is obsolete. doveconf: Warning: Obsolete setting in /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-imap.conf:55: imap_client_workarounds=outlook-idle is no longer necessary Any one else having similar issue? Anything else I should do to narrow down the issue? Thanks KuiZ
` Kui Zhang wrote:> Hello > > I have a user with 2500+ sub folders. Total mailboxes size is around > 6G. (mdbox, dovecot 2:2.0.14) > > Syncing/Receiving appears to be slow, with outlook 2007. He does not > want to switch to an alternative, due to various reasons. > > Any one else having similar issue? > Anything else I should do to narrow down the issue? >---- I can't speak for outlook 2007, but back in outlook 2000, as well as outlook 2002, it spoke a broken dialect of IMAP that would cause it to hang if you enabled it to read multiple mailboxes at one time. The only safe way I found to use it was to only let it use 1 connection at a time, and even then it wasn't impossible to cause to to fail. Perhaps MS limited outlook to only 1 connection to IMAP servers -- when I spoke to the engineer, they said that really had IMAP support at the lowest level, as it allowed the use of non-MS servers and mail servers -- and they only wanted to support Exchange (in order to get sites to buy exchange!)... The issue was reported broken in 2000, and they had not fixed it by 2002 (office XP), so I moved to thunderbird... I missed a few-several features, but I didn't miss the slowness and unreliability in everyday reading of email. Another problem -- AFAIK, outlook is only 32bit. My mom gets harassed, constantly to move things out of her primary .pst file and into 'archives', (where she can't easily access them and they don't have to be indexed...) because, the internal format became more strained as it got larger. With 6G of folders, indexing those, your user might be hitting outlook memory problems (not running out, but 'thrashing')... If possible, he might try unsubbing to older boxes on his main account, and setup an alternate account to 'go into the archives'...that way syncing only with currently active folders should go much faster)... Send him my condolences... -l> > Thanks > KuiZ >
> I think if you disable the new local indexing features in TB then it > should start running fairly decently?I had indexing disabled... that did not help much. TB work better after I have these settings... mail.imap.expunge_after_delete true mail.imap.expunge_option 2 mail.server.default.autosync_offline_stores false mail.server.default.offline_download false mail.server.default.autosync_max_age_days 14 I think mail.imap.expunge_after_delete might have caused mdbox limit problem I had before... but not confirmed.> > Also - Outlook is by far much slower than Thunderbird in my experience... >Multiple people in the office report outlook is faster (when it works). KuiZ On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 11:21 AM, Charles Marcus <CMarcus at media-brokers.com> wrote:> On 2011-09-27 2:06 PM, Ed W <lists at wildgooses.com> wrote: >> >> On 20/09/2011 03:10, Kui Zhang wrote: >>> >>> thunderbird does not really work for us, due to amount of emails per >>> mailbox. It was hogging all the memory + cpu. > >> I think if you disable the new local indexing features in TB then it >> should start running fairly decently? > > Also - Outlook is by far much slower than Thunderbird in my experience... > > -- > > Best regards, > > Charles >
On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:50:39 -0700 Kui Zhang articulated:> On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 11:21 AM, Charles Marcus > <CMarcus at media-brokers.com> wrote: > > On 2011-09-27 2:06 PM, Ed W <lists at wildgooses.com> wrote: > >> > >> On 20/09/2011 03:10, Kui Zhang wrote: > >>> > >>> thunderbird does not really work for us, due to amount of emails > >>> per mailbox. It was hogging all the memory + cpu. > > > >> I think if you disable the new local indexing features in TB then > >> it should start running fairly decently? > > > > Also - Outlook is by far much slower than Thunderbird in my > > experience... > > > > I think if you disable the new local indexing features in TB then it > > should start running fairly decently? > > I had indexing disabled... that did not help much. > > TB work better after I have these settings... > > mail.imap.expunge_after_delete true > mail.imap.expunge_option 2 > mail.server.default.autosync_offline_stores false > mail.server.default.offline_download false > mail.server.default.autosync_max_age_days 14 > > I think mail.imap.expunge_after_delete might have caused mdbox limit > problem I had before... but not confirmed. > > > > > > Also - Outlook is by far much slower than Thunderbird in my > > experience... > > > > Multiple people in the office report outlook is faster (when it > works).I have always found Outlook to be much faster than TB. In any case, Outlook 2007 is an old version. I am using the 2010 version at work and it is a much more polished application than the 2010 version and far superior to TB. -- Jerry ? Dovecot.user at seibercom.net Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or get ignored. Please do not ignore the Reply-To header. __________________________________________________________________
On 9/27/2011 4:50 PM, Kui Zhang wrote:>> I think if you disable the new local indexing features in TB then it >> should start running fairly decently? > > I had indexing disabled... that did not help much. > > TB work better after I have these settings... > > mail.imap.expunge_after_delete true > mail.imap.expunge_option 2 > mail.server.default.autosync_offline_stores false > mail.server.default.offline_download false > mail.server.default.autosync_max_age_days 14 > > I think mail.imap.expunge_after_delete might have caused mdbox limit > problem I had before... but not confirmed.What, exactly, was the nature of the performance problem you originally mentioned to start this thread, the mailbox with the thousands of sub folders? With GLODA and local synchronization disabled, using 1 IMAP connection instead of the default 5, disabling IDLE and using check interval seconds, and using the default: mail.server.default.check_all_folders_for_new FALSE then you should have excellent performance with TB regardless of the number of folders in a mailbox. Unless maybe the hardware or net pipe are lacking. What are the specs of the client machine in question? What CPU/freq. Maybe more importantly, what is the link speed of the network between this PC and the Dovecot server? LAN or WAN? -- Stan
On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Stan Hoeppner <stan at hardwarefreak.com> wrote:> On 9/27/2011 4:50 PM, Kui Zhang wrote: >>> >>> I think if you disable the new local indexing features in TB then it >>> should start running fairly decently? >> >> I had indexing disabled... that did not help much. >> >> TB work better after I have these settings... >> >> mail.imap.expunge_after_delete true >> mail.imap.expunge_option 2 >> mail.server.default.autosync_offline_stores false >> mail.server.default.offline_download false >> mail.server.default.autosync_max_age_days 14 >> >> I think mail.imap.expunge_after_delete might have caused mdbox limit >> problem I had before... but not confirmed. > > What, exactly, was the nature of the performance problem you originally > mentioned to start this thread, the mailbox with the thousands of sub > folders?This thread might be getting little off topic. It was for inotify loop on server side during idle (outlook 2k7), with approximate 2.1k folders.> > With GLODA and local synchronization disabled, using 1 IMAP connection > instead of the default 5, disabling IDLE and using check interval seconds, > and using the default:I have not notice looping on idle when client using Thunderbird. So it might be outlook specific.> > mail.server.default.check_all_folders_for_new ? FALSE >Not feasible. Few folders need to be checked periodically...> then you should have excellent performance with TB regardless of the number > of folders in a mailbox. ?Unless maybe the hardware or net pipe are lacking. >Ya, but TB would be doing less work.> What are the specs of the client machine in question? ?What CPU/freq. Maybe > more importantly, what is the link speed of the network between this PC and > the Dovecot server? ?LAN or WAN?avg ttl = 0.5ms Sustain 10-12MB/s, concurrent connections, from 5+ workstations. No load issues recorded on the server side. The clients have 8GB of ram, athlon II X4 640 quad core. they should have enough juice... On an athlon 3200, 2G Ram, I did some tests on an account, with 3GB on disk, approximate 100k emails, and 30 folders. on the client side, when no mail client running. 450-500MB ram used. CPU at 1-2% TB hangs on start up, for extent period of time. cpu at 100%, ram at 1 - 1.2 GB used. CPU usage almost always at 100%. And it hangs from time to time. The client side disk usage for TB is around 200MB? why would it need 500MB of ram? This is something I will bring up with the thunderbird people. With claws-mail, cpu goes up depending on amount of email in the folder. And cpu usage drop almost immediately after folder switch. around 480 ? 520 MB ram used. So the client box is not too slow. KuiZ> > -- > Stan > >