[Mimedefang] ramdisks on Linux

[Rob]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mimedefang-bounces at lists.roaringpenguin.com 
> [mailto:mimedefang-bounces at lists.roaringpenguin.com] On 
> Behalf Of Aaron Paetznick
> 
> It's become obvious that using ramdisks with MIMEDefang is very 
> important.  This might be a strange/silly question, but if I 
> wanted to 
> use a ramdisk for both the sendmail mqueue and the MIMEDefang work 
> directory, would it be better to use two smaller, or one 
> large ramdisk? 
>   Does using two separate ramdisks give the same performance 
> benefit as 
> using two separate physical disks?

[ Insert large flashing red lights here ]

You should not make the sendmail queue directories (/var/spool/mqueue and
/var/spool/clientmqueue) RAM based.  If you do you run the real risk of
losing emails.  What happens if you have a power cut (kick the cable out,
knock the reset button)?  What if you reboot the system?

The only exception is if you create directories for the different files (xf,
df and qf from memory), in which case you can make one of those a RAM disk,
though I can't remember from memory.

[ And more lights here ]

> Also, does the speed of the RAM and memory controller directly affect 
> the speed of the ramdisk?  For instance, would a ramdisk on an Intel 
> 7501 based machine running dual-channel DDR266 be slower than 
> a ramdisk 
> on an AMD Opteron 246 based machine (with an on-chip memory 
> controller) 
> using dual-channel DDR400?

I'd guess so, and that it is somewhat down to the config of the kernel
you're using, but I'm far enough of of my depth on that issue that I'll shut
up now :)


PLEASE - keep list traffic on the list.  Email sent directly to me may be
ignored utterly.

-- 
Rob | What part of "no" was it you didn't understand?