I manage a server at a small business. The server is a P133 with 32
megs of RAM, running RedHat 6.1, Samba, and qmail 1.03. There are
only five users connected to the server, all running Windows 98, and
they are very light users. The entire office gets maybe 20 emails a
day.
For some reason email messages longer than just a few lines take a
VERY long time to download, with numerous "server timeout" messages.
This is not specifically a qmail problem (see my tests below), but
I'm hoping someone will have some clues.
The qmail-pop3d .run file (running from supervise) is:
tcpserver -H -R -l server.local.net 0 110 \
qmail-popup server.local.net \
checkpassword qmail-pop3d Maildir 2>&1 \
splogger pop3d
(I've tried this with & without splogger, tcpserver, and supervise.)
Sending a message approx. 100K locally (never leaves the LAN) can
take 5-10 minutes to retrieve. A message with several large
attachments can take HOURS to download.
These are all of the things I've tried, to no avail. As far as I can
tell nothing has an effect.
* Sending the message is fast, so SMTP service and overall network
performance are OK.
* Copying the same file to/from the server (onto a Samba share) is
fast.
* DNS checked and re-checked; all workstations see each other, and
pings to/from the server are under 1ms.
* Replaced qmail-qpop3d with gnu-pop3d.
* Replaced entire qmail setup with postfix/gnu-pop3d.
* Stopped all unnecessary services. Stopped Samba.
* We're using MS Outlook Express. Downloaded Eudora 4.3 and tried it.
Same problem. In fact telnetting to port 110 and retrieving the
message is slow.
* Authenticating to qmail-pop3d works OK, so there's no problem or
reverse-DNS lookup problem. It's the actual message retrieval that
takes a long time and/or times out.
* NIC diagnostics are OK. Nothing unusual in the Linux boot messages
or logs.
* Replaced the NIC in the server.
* Disconnected all workstations and the firewall (WebRamp 700s) from
the switch (Bay Networks 10/100 8-port) so just the server and one
workstation were connected.
I have searched Deja and used Google to scour the web but I haven't
found anyone else reporting this problem. I've tried everything I can
think of. Please post suggestions here or send email.
Thanks!
Greg Jorgensen
Programmer, pedant, raconteur
Portland, Oregon USA
gregj#pobox.com
