On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 17:00, Joseph Kezar wrote:
> We have about 1100 users on our system. After about 1 month the ext3
> filesystem get 80% non-contigous and the load soars with an average of
> around 7. The performance suffers until I take the server offline and
> archive to tape and recreate my ext3 partition and then read it all back
> from tape. After which I am down to about 3% non-contigous. After
> which it performs like a charm for awhile. I know appending to the
> bottom of files is bad practice, but I dont know any other ways. Any
> ideas I would appreciate greatly.
How full is the disk running? - this is very odd frankly as the file
should be rewritten each time anyone deletes any mail from the file,
unless the thing is so damn full it cannot rewrite the file
contiguously.
Do you have a batch of users that receive but never delete mail?
Maybe there is a spam receiver.....
Do you have a lot of *large* mboxes?
Under these conditions I would look at using a different mail storage
format (maildir or mbx) or a different filesystem (xfs), although it
sounds as though there is some usage pattern that is driving it this
way.
Nigel.
--
[ Nigel Metheringham Nigel.Metheringham@??? ]
[ - Comments in this message are my own and not ITO opinion/policy - ]
