Hi, I’m experience performance issues with a Postfix installation I setup on a Mac OS X server. Originally it was OS 10.7.4 and Postfix 2.9.4, which worked very well. I was using a relatively stock Postfix configuration with a MySQL backend. There are only 2 serious users on the mail server (small company) with about 10 total mailboxes. They started complaining about 3 months ago that their email was sitting in their outboxes for 10-30 seconds before sending. I hadn’t made any changes to the mail server since the original installation but the users had upgraded their workstations to OS 10.9.4. I’ve done the following to attempt to fix the problem on the server, without luck:
- Upgrading the OS to 10.9.4. - Upgrading to Postfix 2.11.1 and Dovecot 2.2.13 - Upgrading to MySQL 5.5.14 - Correcting DNS issues: PTR record, MX records, SRV records (all looks good now). - Correcting email server configuration issues. - Updating the email configuration to handle more spam (it appears to be very effective and the spam rate is low). - Adding a software firewall in front of the server. - Checking server performance issues (CPU and network usage is very low: 1-5%). - Checking for DNS lookup issues (speed looks good on the server). - Checking for bandwidth problems (this looks good 5 Mbps up/50 Mbps down). - General Mac OS cleanup: disk permissions, repair disk, etc... I’ve updated the configuration of the email server based on feedback from "http://www.emailsecuritygrader.com” and brought it from about a C to an A+. I also used "http://www.dnsinspect.com"; to check for DNS issues, which looks fine now. I’ve been testing the server with "http://mxtoolbox.com/diagnostic.aspx” and I notice that my average “Email Server Test” is usually about 5 seconds. The best time is around 1 seconds and the worst time is around 20 seconds. These seem very high to me. I’m guessing that these slow response times are also what is causing email to sit in the mailbox. This is an 2.0 GHz i7 server with 8 GB of RAM. I’m thinking the response time should be in ms not seconds. Has anyone experienced issues like this? Any suggestions on where I could test next? Here is my postconf -n output: broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes command_directory = /usr/local/sbin config_directory = /usr/local/etc/postfix daemon_directory = /usr/local/libexec/postfix data_directory = /var/lib/postfix debug_peer_level = 2 disable_vrfy_command = yes dovecot_destination_recipient_limit = 1 html_directory = no inet_interfaces = x.x.x.x, localhost inet_protocols = ipv4 mail_owner = _postfix mailq_path = /usr/bin/mailq manpage_directory = /usr/local/man mydestination = $myhostname, localhost mydomain = abc.com myhostname = mail.abc.com mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8 myorigin = $mydomain newaliases_path = /usr/bin/newaliases queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix readme_directory = no sample_directory = /usr/local/etc/postfix sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail setgid_group = _postdrop smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP smtpd_client_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, permit_sasl_authenticated smtpd_data_restrictions = reject_unauth_pipelining smtpd_enforce_tls = no smtpd_etrn_restrictions = reject smtpd_helo_required = yes smtpd_helo_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, regexp:/usr/local/etc/postfix/helo.regexp, reject_non_fqdn_hostname, reject_invalid_hostname, permit smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, permit_sasl_authenticated, check_client_access hash:/usr/local/etc/postfix/rbl_override, reject_non_fqdn_hostname, reject_non_fqdn_sender, reject_non_fqdn_recipient, reject_unauth_destination, reject_unauth_pipelining, reject_invalid_hostname, reject_rbl_client zen.spamhaus.org, reject_rhsbl_reverse_client dbl.spamhaus.org, reject_rhsbl_helo dbl.spamhaus.org, reject_rhsbl_sender dbl.spamhaus.org, permit smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes smtpd_sasl_authenticated_header = yes smtpd_sasl_local_domain = $myhostname smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot smtpd_sender_restrictions = reject_unknown_sender_domain smtpd_tls_auth_only = yes smtpd_tls_cert_file = /usr/local/etc/postfix/smtpd.cert smtpd_tls_key_file = /usr/local/etc/postfix/smtpd.key smtpd_tls_loglevel = 1 smtpd_tls_security_level = may smtpd_use_tls = yes tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom unknown_local_recipient_reject_code = 550 virtual_alias_maps = mysql:/usr/local/etc/postfix/mysql_virtual_alias_maps.cf virtual_gid_maps = static:102 virtual_mailbox_base = /usr/local/virtual/ virtual_mailbox_domains = mysql:/usr/local/etc/postfix/mysql_virtual_domains_maps.cf virtual_mailbox_limit = 51200000 virtual_mailbox_maps = mysql:/usr/local/etc/postfix/mysql_virtual_mailbox_maps.cf virtual_minimum_uid = 102 virtual_transport = dovecot virtual_uid_maps = static:102 There is a possibility that this issue is a bug in the Mail.app in Mac OS X but I’d like to eliminate Postfix as a possibility. Thanks, Chris McKinnon
