[imp] imp memory requirement when large image is attached

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting Matus UHLAR - fantomas <uhlar at fantomas.sk>:

>> >>I believe there is already an enhancement ticket on bugs.horde.org.
>
>> Quoting Matus UHLAR - fantomas <uhlar at fantomas.sk>:
>> >You probably mean this one: http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/?id=3808
>> >I am not so sure that's it - this is about displaying thumbnails instead
>> >of linking them, and as long as they are not displayed, they probably
>> >don't get processed. Or am I wrong and should I fill new report, or add
>> >comment to this one?
>
> On 25.05.06 08:43, Michael M Slusarz wrote:
>> You are wrong.  We *always* have to load the data into the object if
>> the thumbnail size limit is reached because it quite frequently occurs
>> that the data is bad, in which case we don't want to show the
>> thumbnail information.  So it is the exact same issue listed in the
>> above ticket.
>
> In my case, the image has "Content-Disposition: attachment" and IMP is set
> up not to display attachments. The image is fine, it's just HUGE. However,
> IMP eats much memory so I think it tries somehow to process the image.
>
> Shouldn't IMP skip processing of the image in any way in this case?

You didn't understand what I said previously then.  Before we display  
a link to view a thumbnail, we need to make sure that the image data  
is valid.  To do that, we have to read all data into memory.  From our  
point of view, it is much better to use a lot of system resources to  
ensure we have a good thumbnail link rather than have a thumbnail link  
that lead to a page that displays errors.  So, as I said before, the  
only way to not do this check is to not allow thumbnail displays in  
the first place.  This is exactly what Ticket #3808 is concerned with.

Also, the Content-Disposition: header has nothing to do with whether  
the MUA manipulates the data - it only requires that the data not be  
shown to the user without some sort of user input requesting display.

As mentioned previous times on this list, the issue is instead that  
internet mail is *not* designed to handle multi megabyte attachments.   
E-mail is about the least efficient method possible to send messages.   
You have two options: 1) don't send e-mails with huge attachments (or  
don't allow the users to read messages with these huge attachments) or  
2) accept that to parse these messages, it is going to take a  
disproportionate amount of processing/memory.

michael

___________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at horde.org]