On Tue, 8 Jan 2002, Ted Cabeen wrote: > In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Gregory Hicks writes: > >> The cache files store the precomputed UIDLs on messages in the mailbox, > >> and some similar information, so that qpopper does not need to scan the > >> mailbox every time it's invoked if there are no new messages. I'm not > >> sure if you can disable it - there's probably a way - but if you do it > >> will slow down your qpopper startup times and put extra load on your > >> system. In general, caches are good, and these files are small so > >> shouldn't be eating up unnecessary amounts of disk space. > > > >Actually, what you really want to do is to put the cache dir on another > >spindle and then leave it alone - unless your temp-drop-dir is *truly* > >small. This increases your throughput and splits the I/O load. > > > >For instance, on our main mail server with 2,200 users, the drop dir is > >only a WHOPPING 20.2K in size... > > One thing to note is that those cache files can cause problems if you're not > careful to delete them when you delete a user. If you don't do so, if you > delete a user and then recreate it shortly thereafter with a different UID, > the user won't be able to check their mail until the old files are removed. > I wrote a patch that allows the .cache and .lock files to go in user home > directories, if you want them there.
I'm not overly concerned with the sizes and, after reading up on it a bit more, can see the benefits of the cache. I've already moved the cache directory to another location, though it was mostly to keep my operators from panicing about all the new files in the drop zone. I'll add the code to our User Management System to remove the .cache with the user (thanks for that tip). What puzzles me is that these files only appear on one system running 4.0.3. If it's a feature, I'd expect it to exist on all my servers (10 mail servers running various platforms). These servers are all independent, not clustered so every installation is unique, though I've configured them nearly identically in most cases (had to add bulldb for a couple of customers). -- Kip Turk [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems Administrator/Killer of Spam/Writer of Code/Penguin Proponent West Central Net - tel: 915.234.5678 / 800.695.9016 fax: 915.656.0071 -.-. --- -.. . / -- --- -. -.- . -.-- --..-- / .... .- -.-. -.- . .-.
