[imp] Speed Issues with IMP and high volume messages

[Robert Clemens]

I keep quite a large collection of mail in my Mailbox. I have
Probably close to 5000 messages on mine. It loads up very quickly
For me. I'm running my server on a server that isn't anything super
Special. It's a PIII 550/512cache with 512mb ram and a 5400rpm hard
Drive. Nothing spectacular there. I would venture to say that IMP/HORDE
does a great job loading the messages. You might check your log messages
to see
If anything is spewing out into them when a user logs in or something to
that effect. Also make sure you compiled everything with the right
options. I believe I've read on the mailing list that you need to
compile php with mcrypt or you will suffer speed problems. Also what
IMAP server are you using. I'm running courier-imap. I don't see why
other IMAP servers would suffer from slowness but I dunno. Hope this
helps at all.

-Robert Clemens

-----Original Message-----
From: imp-bounces at lists.horde.org [mailto:imp-bounces at lists.horde.org]
On Behalf Of Eric Rostetter
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 1:30 PM
To: imp at lists.horde.org
Subject: Re: [imp] Speed Issues with IMP and high volume messages

Quoting Iain Collins <iain.collins at uk.easynet.net>:

> We use HORDE & IMP here, and have done for quite some time. It's very
slow
> opening large mailboxes, that is mail boxes with around 300 or more
> messages, or with several messages with large attachments.

That should not be so.  I *never* have less than 1500 messages in my
inbox
and it responds in a fairly timely fashion.

> - For one user with 470 messages (average size is around 2-3K per
message,
> there is one 6 MB attachment, and around 4 messages with 2 MB
attachments,
> the rest are all typical size), it takes 40 to 50 seconds from
clicking
> 'Login' to actually seeing a list of messages (and that was on a test
server
> with no other load).

In my setup, with about 16-17K messages, several large attachments, etc.
and it all being filtered at login, it takes about 3-6 seconds depending
on load.  I'd bet a fair amount of the time is the filtering.

> - For another user, with around 3,000 messages (also with an average
size of
> around 2K per message), the time between clicking 'Login' and being
greeted
> win a message list is 4 minutes). Getting message headers should take
just a
> few seconds (and indeed it does, with other IMAP clients).

3000 messages in the inbox is probably excessive, but it surely
shouldn't
take that long given sufficient hardware.  You don't mention your
hardware...

> The same slowness is oddly also present when clicking 'log off'.

That seems very strange.  I would think maybe this is a problem with
sessions
or something, but I don't know how to correlate that with the message
number
or size impacting the time.

> Users with smaller mailboxes (e.g. 50-100 message) log on very quickly
with
> no issue.

Very strange.

> Finally, the questions:
>
> I'd like to know anyone able to use HORDE with large amounts of
messages
> (500-1000) /without/ experiencing similar slowness?

Yes, of course.  That would be the norm.

> Is this just an unavoidable issue caused by the way HORDE handles
messages
> (i.e. custom filtering rules/content filtering/etc - even though it
doesn't
> matter if the effected customers have filtering on or off, the same
slowness
> occurs)?

No.  We have many users with thousands of messages, often hundreds of
megabytes
of mail in their inbox, all getting less than 10 second access.

> Can any one suggest a work around for this to improve the speed?

Nope.  No idea what your problem is.  I'd suggest some low level
debugging.
Tracing things at the imap server, or on the network via a sniffer, or
something.  Or checking timing within Horde/IMP to see where the
slowness
occures exactly.

--
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin

Why get even? Get odd!

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