MS Performance

[Randy Herban]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ken Anderson [mailto:ka at PACIFIC.NET] 
> Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 8:32 AM
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: MS Performance
> 
> 
> Tony Johansson wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 09:30:11 -0700, Ken Anderson <ka at PACIFIC.NET> 
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>A possible bottleneck is syslog, since both sendmail & MS are very 
> >>busy adding log entries to the maillog, though I haven't done any 
> >>testing to see if this is really a problem.
> >>
> >
> > Have you tried turning off fsync on the maillogs?
> >
> >>From "Sendmail performance tuning" by Nick Christenson (highly 
> >>recommended):
> > "On Linux systems, by default the syslog daemon will 
> fsync() its log 
> > files after each entry is written to them. On a busy email server, 
> > this operation can cause a measurable slowdown. In most 
> organizations, 
> > email server logs aren't so critical. This behaviour can be 
> switched 
> > off by preceding the appropriate entry in the 
> /etc/syslog.conf file with "-":
> > mail.* -/var/adm/mail    "
> 
> 
> LA dropped from 2.7 to 1.3 with just that modification to 
> syslog.conf. Seems I should pick up that book! Thanks,
> 
> Ken A.
> 
> >
> > regards, Tony
> >
> >
> 

Another thing to consider if you have enough servers or enough logs to
warrant it is using a central syslog server.  Helps keep the burden off
your mail servers and keeps all the logs in one place, easier for
searching through for problems and/or running any of the stats programs
that have been produced by this list.