Re: Maildir ext4 slowness
On Tue, Apr 08, 2014 at 11:53:52PM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> As with any MUA directly accessing maildir files performance gradually
> slows down over time with more and more mail files because they are
> scattered across the filesystem, especially with EXT, much less so with
> XFS. Seeking to 1000 files all over the disk to read the headers takes
> time. mbox is quicker because you typically have far more messages
> stored linearly on disk, thus you have much less seeking when reading
> headers.
I intend trying out XFS on the next opportunity, just to compare the performance.
> Mutt, as with other MUAs, creates a header cache so it only needs to
> read the headers of new mail files. If you're slowing down with large
> maildir folders, the most likely problem is that your header caching is
> not working properly. I am not a mutt user so I cannot tell you which
> knob to turn or which cache file to delete/recreate to fix this. I have
> seen the same problem with many other MUAs and this is most often the
> cause. See this thread from '08 for background on the excessive
> seeking. The patch for this should already be in your mutt version if
> it's current, but understanding what is being discussed may give you an
> idea as to what is broken, and where to start looking:
>
> http://lkml.iu.edu//hypermail/linux/kernel/0812.2/00514.html
The suggestion of using a header cache was what I wasn't aware of, and
this helped speed up access significantly. Thanks for the suggestion
and the link.
Kumar
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