On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 03:32:40 +0200, Karolis Dautartas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > hello qmail-ldap users, > > I run a free email server using qmail-ldap and store messages in a > directory structure like this: > > /maildirs/domain.com/user > > as with everything that is free, the amount of users is growing day by > day :) So I am wondering what happens if there are 1000 users in the > system. There will be 1000 directories (maildirs) in domain.com. That > sounds kind of OK. > > what if there are 100k users? I guess it would slow down filesystem > quite a bit, no? Maybe it would be a good idea to split the directory > into something like: > > /maildirs/domain.com/001/userxxxx > /maildirs/domain.com/001/userxxxy > /maildirs/domain.com/001/userxxxz > /maildirs/domain.com/001/.... > /maildirs/domain.com/002/userxxx > /maildirs/domain.com/002/.... > ... > /maildirs/domain.com/XXX/userxxx > > The question is: how many maildirs per directory is a good idea? > > thanks, > Karolis > >
The performance impact from large directories will have a lot to do with the type of file system you are using. File systems like reiserfs, xfs, and other btree based file systems handle very large directories very well, other like ext2/ext3 that use linked lists for the directory lists can start to slow down when you get more then 10k entries (though linux 2.6 includes the htree patch to do hashed directories indexes which should make accessing it better though I have not tested it personally). What operating system and file system are you using to store the mailboxes on? -- Sean Plaice
