[rescue] mail server???

[ssandau at bath.tmac.com]

> A friend of mine is having trouble with his mail server.  He's running a
> pentium class system with Slackware 8 (I think) on it serving multiple web
> pages and 4 (I think) mailing lists + several pop accounts off a DSL line.
> Every so often sending mail on the pop accounts slows to a crawl (he runs
> qmail btw) and the only thing that seems to fix it is rebooting the
> server.
> He also has a sparc 10 laying around that needs a little tlc (memory error
> I think) and my suggestion was to use this as the server or at least the
> mail server end of it.  Possably running NetBSD or Linux if he really
> wants to.  I am interested in your opinions on how/if this should be done
> and what to use for it, etc...
> 

I've been running a mail server with Slackware for a few years now. I
have only about 50 users, but it is an imap server with about 2G of
mail. (I am a nice guy.) I wrestled with performance problems before
putting in 2 100mb NICs and 3x2Gb UW SCSI drives striped. Works fine
now. I do think it might work better with on a SPARC instead of the
Athlon 1GHz box it's on now. It does still slow under load, but it does
not seem to be a CPU problem. I just haven't gotten motivated enough to
screw with a working setup. ;)

I'd sy go for it, and use the OS that'll get the best disk throughput.

I am running the Washington University IMAP server. I switched to a
different POP server because the WU one didn't support one of the POP
commands that SkyTel wanted to use to get mail to a wireless Palm.
(NLIST maybe?) I've generally been happy with the UW stuff otherwise
though.

I also run a www server on a Linux P200. It's light duty though, so the
fact that the CPU is 98% idle most of the time probably doesn't mean
much.

-- 
Steve Sandau, IS Technician
ssandau at bath.tmac.com
TMA Bath Maine