Re: load average question
Hi,
On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, Russell Coker wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Nov 2002 23:51, Scott St. John wrote:
> > A few weeks ago we talked about me moving a server from BSDi to Debian. As
> > luck
> > would have it that BSDi server gave out last Monday and I had to move fast
> > to replace
> > it. Knowing I can do a RH install in about 30 minutes I went the route of
> > familiar
> > territory and installed 7.2 with Sendmail/QPopper/Apache/OpenWebMail. I am
> > paying
> > for that now with a huge performance problem. I am seeing Load Averages
> > spiking
> > above 6 during the day. Hardware is a Dual P3-600 with a gig of ram on a
> > IBM Netfinity Raid 5 controller.
Hmm - watch out for the load qpopper produces. Since the sendmail/qpopper
combination uses mbox a users mailbox is copied every time the mbox is
accessed. If you have large mailboxes (e.g. no quota an users leave mail
on server) this can produce a significant load.
> > The owner of the company wants to go back to BSD, but I want to pursue
> > Debian. So the question is: is anyone running a similar set up with either
> > Sendmail or Posrtfix servicing 2,000+ email accounts with any performance
> > issues?
I would see no problems with that. If you can make sure that the popper
produces the load I'd suggest moving to Maildir for storage of the users
mailboxes and perhaps Postfix with Courier Pop3d.
> Apart from webmail that should be a trivial load. Webmail systems seem to
> take up lots of resources in my experience, is it an option to have a
> separate machine for webmail?
>
> http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
Try this one and look what type of the system is the reason for the
problems.
Regarding a switch to debian. Three years ago we started switching our
servers from Suse to Debian. I've never regretted that switch since
maintaining Debian is so much easier than Suse due to apt.
Regards
Torsten Krueger
--
Media Online Internet Services & Marketing GmbH
Torsten Krueger torsten@nrw-online.de
fon: 49-231-5575100 fax: 49-231-55751098
Ruhrallee 39 D-44137 Dortmund
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