Performance question

[Alan Fiebig]

>Do you know what kind of filesystem is /var/mqueue.in on? (e.g. ext2).

Its etx3

>Long before investing in new hardware I would:
>
>1) install the new MS 4.24 which has an emergency mode triggered when the
>input queue exceeds a (configurable) treshold:
>Max Normal Queue Size = 5000
>(you can modify this value, but don't set it too low).
>This will turn "emergency mode" on when it finds the input queue has more
>than 5,000 messages.
>During "emergency mode", MS won't try to order queue files and will
>process as it finds them.

Questions:
Why is it important to 'order queue' the files?
What is lost when 'emergency mode' 'processes as it finds them'?
Is the 'fairness' issue mentioned below the only issue?
Heck, if 'fairness' is the only issue, any reason I can permanently
run MS in 'emergency mode'?

-Alan

>This should:
>a) increase (significantly) the overall MailScanner throughput
>b) eliminate (during that period) MailScanner "fairness", since old
>messages may be processed well after newer ones.
>MailScanner will stay in "emergency mode" for 40 more rounds _after_ the
>queue dropped below "Max Normal Queue Size" before switching back to
>"normal mode" in order to try to completely drain the queue and not have
>to be switching modes constantly.
>
>2) the other thing you can do is to switch the filesystem type (using
>ReiserFS, or other of the new FSs... however doing that is well beyond
>the scope of this list).