[Dovecot] mailbox size limit

Post by Bazy
Hi guys,
I was wondering... my Inbox is 1.3GB large, my mailbox size limit is 6GB
(6442450941). Other users have 500+ MB in their Inbox.
I have about 27GB of mail. I'm running dovecot 1.0.7 now under Fedora 7
with postfix. I have no trouble at all, everything is working perfect.
I use ext3 as my file system, and I store mail in maildir format.
Will I have any inode, file system, issues?
Is anyone storing more then 27GB in maildir format on only one ext3
partition?
# 1.0.7: /etc/dovecot.conf
log_path: /var/log/dovecot.log
log_timestamp: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S
protocols: imap imaps pop3
ssl_cert_file: /etc/postfix/smtpd.cert
ssl_key_file: /etc/postfix/smtpd.key
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable(default): /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(imap): /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(pop3): /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login
login_max_processes_count: 512
mail_location: maildir:/home/vmail/%d/%n/
mail_executable(default): /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(imap): /usr/libexec/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(pop3): /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3
mail_plugins(default): quota imap_quota
mail_plugins(imap): quota imap_quota
mail_plugins(pop3): quota
mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3
imap_client_workarounds(default): outlook-idle delay-newmail
imap_client_workarounds(imap): outlook-idle delay-newmail
imap_client_workarounds(pop3): outlook-idle
pop3_client_workarounds(pop3): outlook-no-nuls oe-ns-eoh
mechanisms: plain login
driver: sql
args: /etc/dovecot-sql.conf
driver: sql
args: /etc/dovecot-userdb-sql.conf
type: listen
path: /var/spool/postfix/private/auth
mode: 432
user: postfix
group: postfix
quota: maildir:storage=102400
[root:pts/0][~]# cat /etc/dovecot-sql.conf
driver = mysql
connect = host=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock user=mail_admin
password=XXXXXXXX dbname=mail
default_pass_scheme = CRYPT
password_query = SELECT password FROM users WHERE
[root:pts/0][~]# cat /etc/dovecot-userdb-sql.conf
driver = mysql
connect = host=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock user=mail_admin
password=XXXXXXXX dbname=mail
user_query = SELECT CONCAT(('/home/vmail/'),
home, 5000 as uid, 5000 as gid, CONCAT('maildir:storage=',
floor(quota/1024)) as quota FROM users WHERE email = '%u';

Hi,

What kind issues you thinking about? I'm storing currently about 40Gb of
mails. You mean, run out of number inodes on your partition?

Bazy

2007-11-17 14:56:01 UTC

Hi,
What kind issues you thinking about? I'm storing currently about 40Gb of
mails. You mean, run out of number inodes on your partition?

Yes, that's what I meant. Run out of inodes on that partition.

Nikolay Shopik

2007-11-17 15:11:34 UTC

Hi,
What kind issues you thinking about? I'm storing currently about 40Gb of
mails. You mean, run out of number inodes on your partition?

Yes, that's what I meant. Run out of inodes on that partition.

I don't think so.
If /V/ is the volume size in bytes, then the default number of inodes is
given by /V//2^13
That's more than enough.

Nikolay Shopik

2007-11-17 15:23:17 UTC

Hi,
What kind issues you thinking about? I'm storing currently about 40Gb of
mails. You mean, run out of number inodes on your partition?

Yes, that's what I meant. Run out of inodes on that partition.

I don't think so.
If /V/ is the volume size in bytes, then the default number of inodes
is given by /V//2^13
That's more than enough.

should look like this - V/2^13

Bazy

2007-11-17 16:00:22 UTC

Hi,
What kind issues you thinking about? I'm storing currently about 40Gb of
mails. You mean, run out of number inodes on your partition?

Yes, that's what I meant. Run out of inodes on that partition.

I don't think so.
If /V/ is the volume size in bytes, then the default number of inodes
is given by /V//2^13
That's more than enough.

should look like this - V/2^13

Got it :) thank you!

Bill Cole

2007-11-17 16:32:16 UTC

[...]

Post by Bazy
Yes, that's what I meant. Run out of inodes on that partition.

I don't think so.
If /V/ is the volume size in bytes, then the default number of
inodes is given by /V//2^13
That's more than enough.

should look like this - V/2^13

Another way to express that: if your average file size is less than
8KB, you will run out of inodes before you run out of disk space.
This would present a real risk for file-per-message mailstores, since
most email messages are significantly smaller that 8KB.

The bytes per inode value is something that can be selected when
creating a filesystem, and different OS's and filesystems have
different defaults. Whether a particular filesystem is headed for
inode exhaustion really depends on how it was created and all of its
contents.

--
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com

Bazy

2007-11-17 20:47:11 UTC

[...]

Post by Bazy
Yes, that's what I meant. Run out of inodes on that partition.

I don't think so.
If /V/ is the volume size in bytes, then the default number of inodes
is given by /V//2^13
That's more than enough.

should look like this - V/2^13

Another way to express that: if your average file size is less than 8KB,
you will run out of inodes before you run out of disk space. This would
present a real risk for file-per-message mailstores, since most email
messages are significantly smaller that 8KB.
The bytes per inode value is something that can be selected when
creating a filesystem, and different OS's and filesystems have different
defaults. Whether a particular filesystem is headed for inode exhaustion
really depends on how it was created and all of its contents.

I understand... I should read mode about this.

I had dovecot with mbox and mbox is not very fast... my hard drive would
seeeeeeek before it could load a mail. I only use imap. Not to mention
when i search all my mail for something in the body of the message. I
use mozilla's thunderbird.

Yes, maybe 95% of the mail is less then 8KB, but as df -i said, I have a
lot of free inodes. :)

[root:pts/0][~]# df -i
Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 19281504 140795 19140709 1% /

Thank you for all your answers!

Hugo Monteiro

2007-11-17 16:12:16 UTC

Hi,
What kind issues you thinking about? I'm storing currently about 40Gb of
mails. You mean, run out of number inodes on your partition?

Yes, that's what I meant. Run out of inodes on that partition.

An excerpt from wikipedias ext3 definition:

"The maximum number of inodes (and hence the maximum number of files and
directories) is set when the file system is created. If /V/ is the
volume size in bytes, then the default number of inodes is given by
/V//2^13 (or the number of blocks, whichever is less), and the minimum
by /V//2^23 . The default was deemed sufficient for most applications."

You can read the rest here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3

In my case, i have a 1.2TB filesystem which is currently holding 312GB
of mail. According to the values present earlier, i can have up to
1268272861184/8192 (1.2TB/2^13) files/dirs. The magic number in my case
is 154818464.

As i said, currently i have 312GB of used space on a single filesystem,
which holds aprox 16000 user maildirs. The total number of files+folders
on that filesystem is 7106571, which represents only 4.59% of the
maximum possible number of files/folders. The current occupancy rate is
28%. Using this ratio as sample, i'd say that i'm pretty much safe ...
as i'm sure you'll be.

Regards,

Hugo Monteiro.
--
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Hugo Monteiro
Email : hugo.monteiro at fct.unl.pt
Telefone : +351 212948300 Ext.15307

Centro de Inform?tica
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Universidade Nova de Lisboa
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Telefone: +351 212948596 Fax: +351 212948548
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Matt

2007-11-18 01:27:04 UTC