[Dovecot] High Load Average on POP/IMAP.

Urban Loesch bind at enas.net
Wed Aug 21 15:04:52 EEST 2013


Hi,

if you try the following command during the server has a high load:

# ps -ostat,pid,time,wchan='WCHAN-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',cmd ax  |grep D

Do you get back something like this?

STAT   PID     TIME WCHAN-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx CMD
D    18713 00:00:00 synchronize_srcu           dovecot/imap
D    18736 00:00:00 synchronize_srcu           dovecot/imap
D    18775 00:00:05 synchronize_srcu           dovecot/imap
D    20330 00:00:00 synchronize_srcu           dovecot/imap
D    20357 00:00:00 synchronize_srcu           dovecot/imap
D    20422 00:00:00 synchronize_srcu           dovecot/imap
D    20687 00:00:00 synchronize_srcu           dovecot/imap
S+   20913 00:00:00 pipe_wait                  grep D

If yes, it could be a problem with Inotify in your kernel. You can try to disable inotify
in the kernel with:

echo 0 > /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches
echo 0 > /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_instances

Full article:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1315430

For me this resolved the problem. Load goes down to < 1.00


Regards
Urban




Am 21.08.2013 12:37, schrieb Kavish Karkera:
> Hi,
>
> We have a serious issue running on our POP/IMAP servers these days. The load average of a servers
> spikes up to 400-500  as a uptime command result, for a particular time period , to be specific
> mostly in noon time and evening, but it last for few minutes only.
>
> We have 2 servers running dovecot 1.1.20 , in loadbanlancer, We have used KEEPLIVE (1.1.13) for
> loadbalacing.
>
> Server specification.
> Operating System : CentOS 5.5 64bit
> CPU cores : 16
> RAM : 8GB
>
> Mail and Indexes are mounted on NFS (NetApp).
>
> Below is the dovecot -n ... (top results during high spike)
>
>
> #############################################################################################
>
> # 1.1.20: /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf
> # OS: Linux 2.6.28 x86_64 CentOS release 5.5 (Final)
> log_path: /var/log/dovecot-info.log
> info_log_path: /var/log/dovecot-info.log
> syslog_facility: local1
> protocols: imap imaps pop3 pop3s
> listen(default): *:143
> listen(imap): *:143
> listen(pop3): *:110
> ssl_listen(default): *:993
> ssl_listen(imap): *:993
> ssl_listen(pop3): *:995
> ssl_cert_file: /usr/local/etc/ssl/certs/dovecot.pem
> ssl_key_file: /usr/local/etc/ssl/private/dovecot.pem
> disable_plaintext_auth: no
> login_dir: /usr/local/var/run/dovecot/login
> login_executable(default): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
> login_executable(imap): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
> login_executable(pop3): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login
> login_greeting: Welcome to Popserver.
> login_process_per_connection: no
> max_mail_processes: 1024
> mail_max_userip_connections(default): 100
> mail_max_userip_connections(imap): 100
> mail_max_userip_connections(pop3): 50
> verbose_proctitle: yes
> first_valid_uid: 99
> first_valid_gid: 99
> mail_location: maildir:~/Maildir:INDEX=/indexes/%h:CONTROL=/indexes/%h
> mmap_disable: yes
> mail_nfs_storage: yes
> mail_nfs_index: yes
> lock_method: dotlock
> mail_executable(default): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap
> mail_executable(imap): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap
> mail_executable(pop3): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3
> mail_plugins(default): quota imap_quota
> mail_plugins(imap): quota imap_quota
> mail_plugins(pop3): quota
> mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap
> mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap
> mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/pop3
> pop3_no_flag_updates(default): no
> pop3_no_flag_updates(imap): no
> pop3_no_flag_updates(pop3): yes
> pop3_lock_session(default): no
> pop3_lock_session(imap): no
> pop3_lock_session(pop3): yes
> pop3_client_workarounds(default):
> pop3_client_workarounds(imap):
> pop3_client_workarounds(pop3): outlook-no-nuls
> lda:
>    postmaster_address: admin at research.com
>    mail_plugins: cmusieve quota mail_log
>    mail_plugin_dir: /usr/local/lib/dovecot/lda
>    auth_socket_path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-master
> auth default:
>    worker_max_count: 15
>    passdb:
>      driver: sql
>      args: /usr/local/etc/dovecot-mysql.conf
>    userdb:
>      driver: sql
>      args: /usr/local/etc/dovecot-mysql.conf
>    userdb:
>      driver: prefetch
>    socket:
>      type: listen
>      client:
>        path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-client
>        mode: 432
>        user: nobody
>        group: nobody
>      master:
>        path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-master
>        mode: 384
>        user: nobody
>        group: nobody
> plugin:
>    quota_warning: storage=95%% /usr/local/bin/quota-warning.sh 95 %u
>    quota_warning2: storage=80%% /usr/local/bin/quota-warning.sh 80 %u
>    quota: maildir:storage=64
> ##############################################################################################
>
> ##############################################################################################
>
> top - 12:08:31 up 206 days, 10:45,  3 users,  load average: 189.88, 82.07, 55.97
> Tasks: 771 total,   1 running, 767 sleeping,   1 stopped,   2 zombie
> Cpu(s):  8.3%us,  7.6%sy,  0.0%ni,  8.3%id, 75.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.8%si,  0.0%st
> Mem:  16279824k total, 11913788k used,  4366036k free,   334308k buffers
> Swap:  4192956k total,        0k used,  4192956k free, 10359492k cached
>
>    PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>    408 mysql     18   0  384m  38m 4412 S 52.8  0.2  42221:44 mysqld
> 29326 nobody    15   0 22688  10m 1112 D  3.9  0.1   0:00.05 imap
> 29313 nobody    16   0 14892 4892 1000 S  3.1  0.0   0:00.07 imap
> 28129 nobody    16   0 23688 4148 1140 S  2.3  0.0   0:00.10 imap
> 28936 nobody    16   0 25048  13m 1108 S  2.3  0.1   0:00.06 imap
> 29302 nobody    16   0 15168 3924 1000 S  2.3  0.0   0:00.05 imap
> 29307 nobody    16   0 12864 2892 1000 S  2.3  0.0   0:00.03 imap
> 21956 root      15   0 13272 1652  800 R  1.6  0.0   0:06.46 top
> 29119 nobody    16   0 26000 9324 1096 D  1.6  0.1   0:00.11 imap
> 29158 nobody    16   0 12684 2728 1028 S  1.6  0.0   0:00.03 imap
> 29204 nobody    16   0 14400 4232 1000 S  1.6  0.0   0:00.08 imap
> 29262 nobody    16   0 25436 2776 1120 S  1.6  0.0   0:00.02 imap
>   3397 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.8  0.0  28:02.90 rpciod/2
>   3401 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.8  0.0 337:30.77 rpciod/6
>   4218 root      16   0  8948 1548  588 S  0.8  0.0   8:05.53 dovecot
> 10214 root      15   0 50868 1968 1468 S  0.8  0.0   0:30.08 dovecot-auth
> 27454 nobody    16   0 19220 5048 1256 D  0.8  0.0   0:00.17 imap
> 27820 nobody    16   0 18916 4704 1252 D  0.8  0.0   0:00.08 imap
> 27925 nobody    16   0 11180 1524 1000 S  0.8  0.0   0:00.07 imap
> 28094 nobody    16   0 11536 2068 1148 S  0.8  0.0   0:00.13 imap
> 28150 nobody    16   0 12528 2396 1104 S  0.8  0.0   0:00.08 imap
> 28196 nobody    16   0 13976 3792 1148 S  0.8  0.0   0:00.21 imap
> 28292 nobody    16   0 11984 1808 1004 S  0.8  0.0   0:00.04 imap
> 28343 nobody    16   0 11584 2052 1152 D  0.8  0.0   0:00.02 imap
> 28352 nobody    15   0 11108 1492 1004 S  0.8  0.0   0:00.04 imap
> 28413 nobody    16   0 11220 1568  996 S  0.8  0.0   0:00.02 imap
> 28434 nobody    16   0 12492 2444 1004 S  0.8  0.0   0:00.05 imap
> 28467 nobody    16   0 11852 2044 1004 D  0.8  0.0   0:00.06 imap
> 28558 nobody    16   0 11904 2316 1168 S  0.8  0.0   0:00.02 imap
> 28643 nobody    16   0 11312 1688 1000 S  0.8  0.0   0:00.04 imap
> 28711 nobody    15   0 12048 1868 1004 S  0.8  0.0   0:00.04 imap
> 28779 nobody    16   0 23392  10m 1000 D  0.8  0.1   0:00.05 imap
>
> ############################################################################################
>
> Regards,
> Kavish Karkera
>


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