Thanks Len ----- Original Message ----- From: "Len Conrad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 3:29 PM Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] 100% CPU usage problem FIXED?
> > >Defragging the drive, > > makes sense. > > >cleaning up mailboxes over 100MB's and > > makes sense > > >tripling the swap file size seems to have worked. > > can somebody explain to me why swapping is going on on a mail server? why > the swap size has to be 3x memory size? is it IMail processes being > swapped out? > > >I noticed that a few single mail boxes were fragmented over 1,000 times, > >before the defrag. I'm sure that can't be good. > > I suspect that my Eudora 3,4,5 on nt4 and w2k blows up when my largish > mailbox flat text files, subject to 1000's of additions/deletions each, get > badly fragmented. All those versions of eudora on two OS's have blown > up. nt4 was often BSOD, but w2k justs writes out a dump file. > > >Thanks for all the support on this List. You guys rule!! > > If we don't hear from you, we'll assume you're fixed, but be sure to get > back to us if it isn't. > > so if we try to generalize (and none of this is new info). > > 1. Keep your mailbox partitions small AND with lots of free space!! so > defragging them doesn't take days. > > 2. have separate, dedicated partition for the imail spool directory, and a > separate, dedicated partition for the swapfile. imagine the fragmentation > and metadata nightmare when the two or more of spool, swap, and mailboxes > share the same partition. > > 3. enforce reasonable limits on max msg size and max mailbox size. > > 4. if .mbx files (linear, non-indexed text files) have a long life and get > large, they will be badly fragmented as msgs in the mailbox get added and > deleted 100's or 1000's of times. IMAP and webmail are evil since it > encourages big mailboxes and the problems then bring (ie, higher > maintenance costs for the Imail admin person, Imail instability), POP is > better since the .mbx will often be zeroed on every connection. > > 5. defragment one partition at a time. note that defragging goes a lot > faster if there is more free space on a partition, like 30 or 40% free > space. Without "sufficient" freespace, defragging takes forever. > > yes, we've all heard that defragging mailboxes while mail is arriving > screws up, but somewhere, somehow, sometime, defragging is essential to > Imail stability ( an old, blatant MS lie circa 1997 as NT4 arrive: "the new > NTFS is so wonderful, it never needs defragging, so that's why MS doesn't > deliver a degrag util with the OS" ) > > 6. keep your spool directory, on its own dedicated partition, as small as > possible, killing old files (ispclean.exe) and zipping/moving log files to > another machine. > > Absolutely none of the above is new, we've re-hashed it many times here. > > Len > > > http://MenAndMice.com/DNS-training > http://BIND8NT.MEIway.com : ISC BIND 8.2.4 for NT4 & W2K > http://IMGate.MEIway.com : Build free, hi-perf, anti-abuse mail gateways > > > Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html > to be removed from this list. > > An Archive of this list is available at: > http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ > Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html to be removed from this list. An Archive of this list is available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
