Author: Tamas TEVESZ Date: To: Oliver Egginger CC: exim-users Subject: Re: [Exim] Strange problem whilst using Reiserfs
On Fri, 8 Jun 2001, Oliver Egginger wrote:
> I have only a few thousand mailboxes (files) in the spool/mail
> directory (but maybe I will set up an imap-service).
> Our users store not more than 500 MB of data in there boxes.
>
> Is there a big advantage (in connection to exim) that justifies switching to reiserfs ?
i don't think so. i'm using ext2 on a plain simple u2w scsi disk for
38000 users (well they don't eat sg like 6 gigs alltogether [they
tried but i'm cutting their fingers as i type this:)]), the machine
also serves as a mysql server (partly for exim and
courier-{pop3,imap}d and party as an authentication source for an
offmachine ftpd which also is heavily loaded), and i don't have the
slightest problem with it. i hashed the mail spool in two levels,
underneath are the maildirs, and it's just fine (using maildir++,
evel mailquota in exim didn't add noticeble extra load).
my point is that exactly because ext2 is older, it's a safer bet. of
course if you crash, you'll wait long for the fsck, but, don't crash
:)
> Are there other topics related to e-mail (pop3, imap etc.) for which
> reiserfs is a big win?
you first need to decide what storage format you'll use and look at
the matter from that standpoint. mbox, mh, maildir are all pretty
different thus they behave very differently and their needs are
different too.
with mbox, you have one file, which you need to lock, you need to seek
a hell a lot in. with maildir (maildir++ kicks ass!) you have several
(thousand even) files, which you don't need to lock, don't need to
seek in, but you need to readdir a lot, and you can easily have biiiig
directories.
i found ext2 to be adequate for my needs. i had some strange problems
with reiser in the past (this is said to be changed since) so i
converted to ext2 and i don't really see a reason why i should revert
back as long as i'm not getting random os crashes every day. but then,
if i will, that will be a whole different problem and switching fs
won't solve it either..
