Topic: Number of Users on SME Server

[smeusr]

I'm curious about the number of users at each of your installations.  Can you share with us the size of the server installed and the number of users attached to it.

I have Duron 1.7 GHz, 512meg Ram and 4 users.

[jfarschman]

SMEUser,

  I have small systems... but I'm going to play around next week with the possibility of putting a little rural ISP on a SME.  All one domain name.  Roughly 2500 users.  Potential problem?

  1.  I will need to set quotas automatically for each user.
  2.  No paging in the userlist.  How long will it take to load 2500 names.
  3.  2500 users each receiving ~30 messages/day (50 msg/min)
  4.  Some users NEVER check their email.  What happens in overquota situations.

I won't be able to load test right away.... but I can test the other aspects.  I'm going to import users (with LAT) from the current server and take a look.

I'd be curious to hear what others have to say.

[hkgonra]

Could you elaborate on your #3
3. 2500 users each receiving ~30 messages/day (50 msg/min)

There is a 50msg/min in sme ?
I read that as a 50 message minimum.

[jfarschman]

Sorry....  I just did the math and 2500 user receiving roughly 30 messages per day would mean an average of 50 messages every minute.

Of course, that would mean 0 messages at some time during the day and a good bit more at other times of the day.

I do not believe there are any software limits on the number of messages the system process per minute, per hour, per day.....  The limit likely be the disk RW on the spam and av.

The current system I have this running on is 1Ghz processor with 7200 rpm PATA drives.  The software Linux 7.2, Sendmail 8.x, no spam or virus filtering.

[hkgonra]

Sorry....  I just did the math and 2500 user receiving roughly 30 messages per day would mean an average of 50 messages every minute.

Of course, that would mean 0 messages at some time during the day and a good bit more at other times of the day.

I do not believe there are any software limits on the number of messages the system process per minute, per hour, per day.....  The limit likely be the disk RW on the spam and av.

The current system I have this running on is 1Ghz processor with 7200 rpm PATA drives.  The software Linux 7.2, Sendmail 8.x, no spam or virus filtering.

Crap !!! I would have never thought that little hardware could handle so much traffic !!!!

[jfarschman]

Starting on my 2500 User export import

I'm adding another obstacle....

  6.  How do I export passwords from the old system. (not SME)

[cityexplorer]

How do u import user list? I tried lat-user on SME  v7 but it doesn't work.


lat-users -a -c "in_test|test|user"
*WARNING* esmith::config(/home/e-smith/accounts) called with old database path. The following package needs to be updated:  at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/esmith/config.pm line 374
        esmith::config::TIEHASH('esmith::config', '/home/e-smith/accounts') called at /usr/sbin/lat-users line 17
Can't find /home/e-smith/accounts at /usr/sbin/lat-users line 159.


Any other tools can help?

SMEUser,

I won't be able to load test right away.... but I can test the other aspects.  I'm going to import users (with LAT) from the current server and take a look.

I'd be curious to hear what others have to say.

[jfarschman]

City,

  Apparently LAT uses the older database locations... so to fix this you can create symbolic links:

  mkdir -p /home/e-smith/accounts
  ln -s /home/e-smith/db/accounts /home/e-smith/accounts
  ln -s /home/e-smith/db/configuration /home/e-smith/configuration
  ln -s /home/e-smith/db/domains /home/e-smith/domains
  ln -s /home/e-smith/db/hosts /home/e-smith/hosts
  ln -s /home/e-smith/db/networks /home/e-smith/networks

You probably one need the first one... but there may be other contribs that use other DB with their old locations.

[byte]

 Apparently LAT uses the older database locations

Or just use the LAT tools that JB updated...See here on City's other post...

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=34234.0

[kruhm]

listening

[jfarschman]

Kruhm,

  Since you are listening I'll status you.  We have the system with 2500 users running and it's pretty successful, but there are two issues at the moment:

  A.  Logging of POP/IMAP connections - Working with ISPs in the past, (using sendmail) I taught the sys admin' how to read grep the log files and find usernames associated with IP addresses and specific error messages.  The take the error message and search in your Knowledgebase or on Google to find some background about the problem.  SME doesn't really log much detail about POP connections, or if it does I'm too dense to figure it out.  What I'd need?  A username matched to an error message... for instance joeblow - invalid password.

  B.  Overquota Conditions - When a user is over quota his webmail is not visible.  Which is strange for an email only user... because they sort of need to delete email in order to get back under quota.  Back in the sendmail/mbox land I wrote a script that would rip through the every users email and throw away email oder than 30-days.  This is in the ISP's fine print and cuts back on the number of overquota email boxes significantly.

  C.  Filtering - I'm filtering for Spam and AV inside SME... but there is a special (RedCondor/Barracuda) spam filter in front of the SME that catches inbound traffic.  The ISP purchased this when they had a little 1Ghz sendmail server that was having trouble running MailScanner/ClamAV/SpamAssassin.  The new system doesn't need the pre-filter, but it's there.  BTW: the prefilter queries LDAP for valid users before accepting email and passing it on, so it a nice system, but I think SME would be fine.

In all my one source of pain is the logging.  You just get used to solving problems one way, and not having  detailed logs makes it difficult.

[kruhm]

Thanks for the status. I'm always interested in hearing the details of successful project. I'm impressed -I thought 2500 would be too many. Are all of these users rural isp subscribers?

Sorry, I can't be of much help with your issues. The Barracuda filter probably is a good idea at that level of users. My box becomes extremely slow when it's hammered by a spammer with mulitple servers.

Do you rent rack space?

[jfarschman]

Well,

  Thanks for the interest.  It's a rural ISP/phone company and it's easy to think of them as small because the facilities are in a small town, but they do have a T3 and they have their own computer room (so they don't rent rack space).

  Wrote a script over the weekend to help deal with the overquota conditions.  This should help with issue "B" Overquota from people not checking their email regularly

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh
# /etc/cron.daily/remove_old_email
#
########################## PRINCIPLES ##################################
#
# This script will delete old messages from all users boses
# except those specifically commented out in sed
#
########################### VARIABLES ##################################

DAYS_TO_KEEP=30
ALL_USERS=/tmp/todays_users
PURGE_LIST=/tmp/purge_list

#################### DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE ######################

# Find the mailboxes
rm -f $ALL_USERS
ls -1 /home/e-smith/files/users >> $ALL_USERS

# Removes 'Protected Accounts' from the $PURGE_LIST
# the final '/^$/ d' removes any extra spaces

  sed -e 's/^admin//' \
      -e 's/^spamabuse//' \
      -e 's/^spam//' \
      -e 's/^support//' \
      -e '/^$/ d' $ALL_USERS > $PURGE_LIST

# Read all and execute line-by-line
exec < $PURGE_LIST
while read CURRENT_USER REMAINDER
do

# Deletes unread messages ending in .mail (which are the unread ones)  read = \*R\*
find /home/e-smith/files/users/$CURRENT_USER/Maildir -type f  -ctime +$DAYS_TO_KEEP -name *mail | xargs rm -f

done


[Tib]

jfarschman

You may want to add to this bug report then ....

http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3446

Regards,

Tib