Re: Scaling Evo for large mailsets (was Re: [OT] Re: [Evolution] strategies for handling lots of mail)

[Des Dougan <des DouganConsulting com>]

On Sat, 2005-06-25 at 04:23 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-06-25 at 14:51 +0800, Not Zed wrote:
> > > There is no exact solution that'll fit to everyone. Let me tell you what
> > > I'm doing. I have more than 2000 folders and sub/subfolders and it takes
> > > ~5 min to start Evo on a relevantly powerfull machine (PIV 3000 MHz/512
> >
> > Offtopic, i'm just curious ... How can you possibly have (and manage -
> > and have time left over to do anything other than move mails around)
> > 2000 folders of critical mail?
> >
> > On a more important note, how many total messages is that?  And how many
> > vfolders do you have?
> >
> > I've been radically redesigning the way mail information is stored and I
> > guess I need to make sure it scales well this far and beyond.
>
> Since you asked... ;)
>
> Evo+IMAP seems not to scale well when folders get more than 5000ish
> emails.  Time-to-open a folder takes an IMO inordinate amount of 
> time scanning all the headers.
>
> Vitals:
> - Debian Unstable (up to date, GNOME 2.10)
> - Evo 2.2.2-2
> - Courier IMAP 3.0.8-4
> - linux kernel 2.6.11
> - Maildir folders on a reiserfs partition of a 7200RPM IDE HDD

FWIW, I have over 10,000 emails in my Evo folder (Dovecot IMAP on my
server (SME Server, an RH 7.3 derivative), filtering done server-side by
procmail) and access to the folder, on my old P3-500, takes less than
two seconds. Evo start-up, which needs to happen rarely, takes a bit
longer, but otherwise, performance is fine for me.

Des
-- 

Des Dougan, Principal
Dougan Consulting Group

Ph: 604-980-2848       Email: des at DouganConsulting dot com     

        www.DouganConsulting.com

Design - Implementation - Support