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--></style></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Very belated thanks Conz and Shawn!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>I’m running on AWS, on an M6a.xlarge. Once it’s in full service, could see anywhere from 75k-125k messages a day, depending on how busy the spammers are. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>So, ramdisk for the incoming dir <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>I’m planning on implementing postscreen. Suggestions welcome! However the way I’ve implemented the beta involves a local server, so I’m not going to see real external connections until I go livel <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>We’ve been seeing some transient false positives on our RBL’s so I’m looking forward to the postscreen dnsbl_threshold feature. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;mso-ligatures:none'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;mso-ligatures:none'> MailScanner <mailscanner-bounces+betsys=well.com@lists.mailscanner.info> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Conz<br><b>Sent:</b> Saturday, December 13, 2025 9:56 AM<br><b>To:</b> 'MailScanner Discussion' <mailscanner@lists.mailscanner.info><br><b>Subject:</b> RE: Mailscanner Disk Layout - best practice for performance?<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Hi,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>I have the following in my fstab:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>tmpfs /var/spool/MailScanner/incoming tmpfs rw,size=256M 0 0<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>I forgot if the installer put it there or if I put it there lol, this machine has been constantly updated since 2017.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Few things to consider:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Power loss/hard reset means anything in the queue is gone.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Ram/tmpfs disk size determines maximum size of what can be in the queue. If you have a high volume where the queue often builds up you might have to scale to fit. Mine is very low volume and the 256MB is oversized. The whole server only has 6Gb of ram. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>I can’t fully recall but a setup I used to manage from around 06 that did about 20-30k emails a day I think had a 512Mb ramdrive, its 10k disks and 4 core xeon could not keep up with the AV scanning back when multiple scanners still existed for Linux (I think I had 3).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>So, this’ll depend a little on what sort of setup you have or are getting, like if its virtual or physical.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Anything cloud, like your test setup, ramdrive absolutely because you’ll probably get a fat bill otherwise.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Anything virtual on premise and you’ll want the ram drive or your hypervisor admin will get mad at you.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Physical with spinning disks, also ram drive. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Physical with nvme will be up for debate. There’s the wear thing but it should be fine .. but considering the small amount of ram you need it’ll depend on how bad a loss of email is to you.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Any modern hardware with a physical install and it might also be an idea to just have a pair of small cheap nvme’s in raid 1 if the idea of possibly losing emails is a problem for you. The cheaper the better so you can just have a spare on the shelf.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Also, be sure to look at grey-listing if you get more than 2-3k e-mails a day, including spam. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>That’ll have more positive impact on your server load than a ramdisk. The only downside is that there will be a few minutes delay for the first legit email from an unknown server and spam learning might be affected in a negative way if too much is blocked before getting scanned. I have had this problem.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>And don’t forget to look at all the other stuff too like DKIM. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Anything that can be kicked out BEFORE spamassassin or the AV has to do anything is ‘resource profit’ and more free cycles to deal with spam that got through :-)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Iirc there is also some decent scaling information available on the mailscanner site or the book Julian wrote. You don’t need a lot, but obviously It scales with volume.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'>Hope this helps.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Aptos",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;mso-ligatures:none'>Verzonden:</span></b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;mso-ligatures:none'> vrijdag 12 december 2025 19:43<br><b>Aan:</b> 'MailScanner Discussion' <</span><a href="mailto:mailscanner@lists.mailscanner.info"><span style='font-size:11.0pt;mso-ligatures:none'>mailscanner@lists.mailscanner.info</span></a><span style='font-size:11.0pt;mso-ligatures:none'>><br><b>Onderwerp:</b> Mailscanner Disk Layout - best practice for performance?<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>We’re running a beta testing MailScanner with Mailwatch and postfix using Ubuntu 24 LTS on an AWS M6a.xlarge instance with 16G ram. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Before going live, I want to split out the disks for best performance.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Where do you see the highest disk utilization?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>With 16G ram I could squeak out a small ramdisk. Also have the option to go to provisioned IOPS although that gets expensive fast. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Thanks for any suggestions!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>MailWatch Version: 1.2.23<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Operating System Version: Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS (Noble Numbat)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Postfix Version: 3.8.6<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>MailScanner Version: 5.5.3<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>ClamAV Version: 1.4.3<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>SpamAssassin Version: 4.0.0<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>PHP Version: 8.3.6<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>MySQL Version: 10.11.13-MariaDB-0ubuntu0.24.04.1<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>GeoIP Database Version: No database downloaded<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>