I have used a combination of hashed directories for quick lookup and garbmail 
to delete any mail older than 1 month.  Garbmail scans the mailbox and 
deletes any messages that are over N months old. It's a python script 
available at ftp://ftp.cendio.se/pub/misc/garbmail/garbmail-1.0.tar.gz

Using garbmail to remove old mail is the only way I've found to handle the 
problem of users that leave all their mail in thier box.  Of course, you have 
to be sure everyone knows that old mail will be automatically deleted.  This 
has also eliminated users who "can't get thier mail" which was often caused 
by the mailbox becoming huge and taking a very long time to scan.

On Monday 24 March 2003 01:25 pm, Mordechai T. Abzug wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 02:19:38PM -0500, Tim Meader wrote:
> > I am about at the end of my rope. Here on center at NASA we have
> > three main servers that handle POP connections... our problem is
> > that a great majority of users leave their mail on the
> > server... which obviously is horrible for POP performance.
> >
> > Regardless, I have tweaked and tweaked as much as possible, and am
> > making a final change tonight. In particular I would like anyones'
> > feedback on what kind of performance increase switching to hashed
> > directories might achieve.
>
> If your problem is that users are leaving mail on server, hashed
> directories will probably not solve your problem.  Hashed directories
> make directory lookups faster, but actual file reading and writing
> proceeds at the same pace.  The usual problem with users leaving mail
> on the server is in the reads and writes, not in the directory
> lookups.
>
> Tough quotas (both mailbox size and mail-checking frequency) would
> help.
>
> maildir format might help, if you can get all your other tools and
> apps to support it.
>
> - Morty

-- 
Paul Carpenter
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
DodgeNet, Inc.



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