IMAP incredibly slow

[mvdg27]

Hi,

I'm running a VPS with a DirectAdmin install. I'm very satisfied with it. However, since recently I'm experiencing some serious problems with IMAP. Several clienst don't seem to be able to login at their inbox anymore through webmail.

Roundcube just doesn't get past the login page and SquirrelMail produces an error 'ERROR: Connection dropped by IMAP server. Query: SELECT "INBOX"'.

The inboxes of these clients contain about 5000 messages. I think this is causing the problem, as I can access my own inbox perfectly, which only contains 200.

But still, 5000 messages isn't that much, and shouldn't be a problem right?

Are the options to make the e-mail faster? I've read something about using a different type of IMAP server, but I'm afraid I'm too much of a newbie to go about this myself.

I hope someone can share his experience and/or direct me to some tutorials on this topic.

Thanks in advance,
Michiel

[smtalk]

http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=143

[mvdg27]

Ok thanks! I am running CustomBuild yes.

Two question though:

- does it require PHP5 to be running? Or is that just an example for the things you can install through CustomBuild

- What difference does Dovecot make for the maximum allowed messages etc.? Right now I assume that 5000 messages is too much. What are the limitations when using dovecot?

Thanks!

[mvdg27]

Ok. I've updated to Dovecot and it seems to be working faster. I do however have one huge problem: one of the inboxes of my clients seem to have disappeared completely. What to do now? How to restore this?

I could really use some help here!

Thanks!

[nobaloney]

Was it built in the user's /home directory structure? Is the contents empty?

Does the file still exist in /var/spool/virtual?

If not you'll have to restore it manually from backups.

Once it's restored you can run a single-mailbox conversion; search these forums for more information.

Jeff

[mvdg27]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Just now I found out it was a problem with the dovecot.index files. The solution was just deleting these files, so that dovecot could build them again.

Now everything is working again.

-Michiel

[mvdg27]

Ok .. I have everything working as it should now. In the knowledge base I read that you could remove the old mbox files by doing this:

echo "action=delete&value=mbox" >> /usr/local/directadmin/data/task.queue

Is there any hazard in doing this? Or at this point it has nothing to do with the current mailboxes anymore?

By the way, I can confirm that using dovecot has speeded up the mailboxes a lot!

Thanks, Michiel

[nobaloney]

We generally wait about a week before deleting the old files. Just in case someone has a problem.

No one ever has.

Jeff