Re: slow to open mutt/ delete mails
atstake atstake wrote:
> I have just loaded an mbox with 17,000 mails & it takes around 20
> seconds to open. But when I quite ("q") it starts "writing"
> messages which take around 20seconds.
I think it might be time to create an archive folder with old messages
in it that you are less likely to need to refer to quickly. Then the
current mailbox will be smaller and faster. If you need to refer to
the older messages then you have to spend the time to process the
larger archive mailbox.
> I guess a mailbox with 17,000 mails would simply crash in a
> GUI-based MUA (eg. MSOE/ Eudora/ Evolution etc.)!
:-) Well, they shouldn't crash unless they have a bug. But I expect
the scrollbar would be a tiny little sliver of a bar and trying to
move it up or down to the right message would be humanly difficult.
> Is there any other tweak/ performance booster you recommend?
Look at the amount of buffer cache in your system. If you have enough
ram the kernel can use it for filesystem buffer cache. If not then
you will be running completely I/O bound from disk drive speed. I
like using 'htop' for a text based way to see this information. The
'osview' program provides a nice graphical display of this
information. The 'free' command also shows this but requires a small
amount of interpretation where those programs interpret the data for
you and I think are easier to read.
Basically you are looking for a large'ish value in the 'cached' field.
If this is very small then you probably don't have enough ram to make
effective use of filesystem buffer cache and will be running at disk
drive speeds instead of ram speeds.
Don't be confused by small values for free memory. You want as little
"free memory" as possible. For example the linux kernel tries to put
free memory to work as soon as possible into useful purposes such as
filesystem buffer cache. Free memory is memory that is not doing
anything for you.
Bob