[rescue] mail server???

[Patrick Giagnocavo +1.717.201.3366]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 11:00:12PM -0400, ssandau at bath.tmac.com wrote:
> > 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 would suggest trying on both Maildir-style and mbox style mailboxes
and see if there is a difference in performance.  Many people claim
that Maildir is overall less overhead intensive.

./patrick