[Tickets #2315] Uploading attachment uses too much memory

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Ticket URL: http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/?id=2315
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 Ticket             | 2315
 Updated By         | Michael Slusarz <slusarz at mail.curecanti.org>
 Summary            | Uploading attachment uses too much memory
 Queue              | IMP
 Version            | 4.0.3
-State              | Unconfirmed
+State              | Feedback
-Priority           | 2. Medium
+Priority           | 1. Low
 Type               | Bug
 Owners             | 
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Michael Slusarz <slusarz at mail.curecanti.org> (2005-07-28 22:06) wrote:

I really am not sure what I said to set you off so much.  I was not trying
to be condescending, and I am sorry you took it that way.

As far as providing a URL where you could find information - unfortunately,
I am not a paid support agent of Horde.  I would really love to help
everyone, and if I had a URL close at hand I would have given it.  Instead I
suggested a place you could search.

As for your statement that it is obviously IMP's fault for using too much
memory, I respectfully disagree.  First of all, internet mail is not the
place to be sending around 10 MB files but this religious argument has
already taken place on the mailing lists and I will not address it anymore
here.  Second, I can send 10 MB files without PHP using anywhere near 320 MB
of memory so it is clearly not reproducible for everyone.  Third, this *is*
a PHP issue as much as you don't believe it is.  IMP has absolutely NO
control over how we retrieve the data from the uploaded file, for example,
since we are stuck with functions PHP provides to do this.  When we are
encoding the file this is done via a PHP function - we have no control over
the memory usage in this function either.  Swapping data to disk to conserve
memory is not really an option since this really isn't the job of userland
code.  Once again, if you search discussions on the mailing lists you will
find that this topic has come up before and the consensus is that PHP is
pretty darn liberal when it comes to allocating memory (I think this is one
of the items they were shooting to improve on in PHP 5).

I don't doubt that we could make some improvements but simply complaining
about the issue without knowing the underlying facts, or offering to submit
improvements, isn't going to help us out much.