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Posted to users@spamassassin.apache.org by Bjorn Jensen <bj...@info-connect.dk> on 2006/08/09 10:27:55 UTC
Using a ramdisk
Can spamassassin benefit in any way from a ramdisk ?
The server we have for spamassassin, has 3 gigs of ram, and spamd
doesn't even use 1 gig of that, so I thought perhaps it would speed
things up if I could place something on a ramdisk. But this leads to the
question, does spamassassin do any disk intensive things ?
I'm running that gocr image scanning as well, could this benefit from
it, or is it the network lookups that are the slow part in any case ?
Currently a mail is processed in about 1.5 - 6 seconds
regards,
Bjorn Jensen
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is it such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting
Re: Using a ramdisk
Posted by Scott Ryan <sc...@staff.telkomsa.net>.
On Thursday 17 August 2006 13:41, Alex Bramley wrote with regard to - Re:
Using a ramdisk :
> Hi Bjorn,
>
> Bjorn Jensen wrote:
> > Ramprasad wrote:
> >> On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 10:27 +0200, Bjorn Jensen wrote:
> >>> Can spamassassin benefit in any way from a ramdisk ?
> >>> The server we have for spamassassin, has 3 gigs of ram, and spamd
> >>> doesn't even use 1 gig of that, so I thought perhaps it would speed
> >>> things up if I could place something on a ramdisk. But this leads to
> >>> the question, does spamassassin do any disk intensive things ?
> >>> I'm running that gocr image scanning as well, could this benefit from
> >>> it, or is it the network lookups that are the slow part in any case ?
> >>> Currently a mail is processed in about 1.5 - 6 seconds
> >>>
> >>> regards,
> >>> Bjorn Jensen
> >>
> >> Can you get your MTA to write in the ramdisk while it is queing/scanning
> >> the mail. That is where you will get most of your speed. But this may
> >> not be a safe option always.
> >> Typically using scanners like Mailscanner , you could do the actual Mail
> >> scanning when the mail is on the ramdisk. That gives you good
> >> performance benefit. http://www.mailscanner.info/serve/cache/120.html
> >
> > I appreciate the response on this topic, however I was merely interested
> > in the spamassassin aspect of this, and if I could gain a benefit there,
> > and I'm not interested in any mailserver options at the moment.
> >
> > But once again, thanks for taking the time to reply.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Bjorn Jensen
>
> I realise this thread is a week old now, but I thought you might be
> interested to know that we cut disk access by nearly 60% on a set of six
> mailservers by moving the Bayes and auto-whitelist berkeley databases to
> a ramdisk. I'm not sure whether you will be able to achieve a similar
> speed-up (the databases used to be on a RAID-5 filesystem in our case,
> so small writes such as database updates required reads from all other
> disks in the RAID), but there are some definite benefits to be gained
> from doing this. Of course, if you're using an SQL database as your
> bayes store, this is irrelevant.
>
> Cheers,
> --alex
Just been thinking about this a little bit...
If I am not mistaken the BayesDB is db3?
Can it not be compiled against DB4, then you can set the memory cache in a
DB_CONFIG file. This way you get the performance of a ramdisk, but do not run
the risk of losing the DB...
just my $0.02...
--
Regards,
Scott Ryan
ISP Systems Development & Integration Specialist
Telkom Internet
-------------------------------------
Good judgement comes with experience.
Unfortunately, the experience
usually comes from bad judgement.
-------------------------------------
Re: Using a ramdisk
Posted by "John D. Hardin" <jh...@impsec.org>.
On Thu, 17 Aug 2006, Alex Bramley wrote:
> I realise this thread is a week old now, but I thought you might
> be interested to know that we cut disk access by nearly 60% on a
> set of six mailservers by moving the Bayes and auto-whitelist
> berkeley databases to a ramdisk.
How do you copy the updated AWL and (if you're autolearning) Bayes
databases to fixed storage so that they aren't lost? Is it as simple
as a set of copy commands in a cron.hourly job?
--
John Hardin KA7OHZ ICQ#15735746 http://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/
jhardin@impsec.org FALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhardin@impsec.org
key: 0xB8732E79 - 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Apparently the Bush/Rove idea of being a "fiscal conservative" is
to spend money like there's no tomorrow, run up huge deficits, and
pray the Rapture happens before the bills come due.
-- atul666 in Y! SCOX forum
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Re: Using a ramdisk
Posted by Alex Bramley <al...@netservicesplc.com>.
Hi Bjorn,
Bjorn Jensen wrote:
> Ramprasad wrote:
>> On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 10:27 +0200, Bjorn Jensen wrote:
>>
>>> Can spamassassin benefit in any way from a ramdisk ?
>>> The server we have for spamassassin, has 3 gigs of ram, and spamd
>>> doesn't even use 1 gig of that, so I thought perhaps it would speed
>>> things up if I could place something on a ramdisk. But this leads to
>>> the question, does spamassassin do any disk intensive things ?
>>> I'm running that gocr image scanning as well, could this benefit from
>>> it, or is it the network lookups that are the slow part in any case ?
>>> Currently a mail is processed in about 1.5 - 6 seconds
>>>
>>> regards,
>>> Bjorn Jensen
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Can you get your MTA to write in the ramdisk while it is queing/scanning
>> the mail. That is where you will get most of your speed. But this may
>> not be a safe option always.
>> Typically using scanners like Mailscanner , you could do the actual Mail
>> scanning when the mail is on the ramdisk. That gives you good
>> performance benefit. http://www.mailscanner.info/serve/cache/120.html
>>
>>
> I appreciate the response on this topic, however I was merely interested
> in the spamassassin aspect of this, and if I could gain a benefit there,
> and I'm not interested in any mailserver options at the moment.
>
> But once again, thanks for taking the time to reply.
>
> Regards,
> Bjorn Jensen
>
I realise this thread is a week old now, but I thought you might be
interested to know that we cut disk access by nearly 60% on a set of six
mailservers by moving the Bayes and auto-whitelist berkeley databases to
a ramdisk. I'm not sure whether you will be able to achieve a similar
speed-up (the databases used to be on a RAID-5 filesystem in our case,
so small writes such as database updates required reads from all other
disks in the RAID), but there are some definite benefits to be gained
from doing this. Of course, if you're using an SQL database as your
bayes store, this is irrelevant.
Cheers,
--alex
Re: Using a ramdisk
Posted by Bjorn Jensen <bj...@info-connect.dk>.
Ramprasad wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 10:27 +0200, Bjorn Jensen wrote:
>
>> Can spamassassin benefit in any way from a ramdisk ?
>> The server we have for spamassassin, has 3 gigs of ram, and spamd
>> doesn't even use 1 gig of that, so I thought perhaps it would speed
>> things up if I could place something on a ramdisk. But this leads to the
>> question, does spamassassin do any disk intensive things ?
>> I'm running that gocr image scanning as well, could this benefit from
>> it, or is it the network lookups that are the slow part in any case ?
>> Currently a mail is processed in about 1.5 - 6 seconds
>>
>> regards,
>> Bjorn Jensen
>>
>>
>
> Can you get your MTA to write in the ramdisk while it is queing/scanning
> the mail. That is where you will get most of your speed. But this may
> not be a safe option always.
>
> Typically using scanners like Mailscanner , you could do the actual Mail
> scanning when the mail is on the ramdisk. That gives you good
> performance benefit.
> http://www.mailscanner.info/serve/cache/120.html
>
>
I appreciate the response on this topic, however I was merely interested
in the spamassassin aspect of this, and if I could gain a benefit there,
and I'm not interested in any mailserver options at the moment.
But once again, thanks for taking the time to reply.
Regards,
Bjorn Jensen
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is it such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting
Re: Using a ramdisk
Posted by Ramprasad <ra...@netcore.co.in>.
On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 10:27 +0200, Bjorn Jensen wrote:
> Can spamassassin benefit in any way from a ramdisk ?
> The server we have for spamassassin, has 3 gigs of ram, and spamd
> doesn't even use 1 gig of that, so I thought perhaps it would speed
> things up if I could place something on a ramdisk. But this leads to the
> question, does spamassassin do any disk intensive things ?
> I'm running that gocr image scanning as well, could this benefit from
> it, or is it the network lookups that are the slow part in any case ?
> Currently a mail is processed in about 1.5 - 6 seconds
>
> regards,
> Bjorn Jensen
>
Can you get your MTA to write in the ramdisk while it is queing/scanning
the mail. That is where you will get most of your speed. But this may
not be a safe option always.
Typically using scanners like Mailscanner , you could do the actual Mail
scanning when the mail is on the ramdisk. That gives you good
performance benefit.
http://www.mailscanner.info/serve/cache/120.html
Thanks
Ram
RE: Using a ramdisk
Posted by Xander <xa...@wel.nu>.
When using amavisd-new a ramdisk. Ralf Hildebrandt has setup a small page
about it:
http://www.stahl.bau.tu-bs.de/~hildeb/postfix/amavisd_tmpfs.shtml
He says it gives some optimalization.
Regards,
Xander
From: "Bjorn Jensen" <bj...@info-connect.dk>
> Can spamassassin benefit in any way from a ramdisk ?
> The server we have for spamassassin, has 3 gigs of ram, and spamd
> doesn't even use 1 gig of that, so I thought perhaps it would speed
> things up if I could place something on a ramdisk. But this leads to the
> question, does spamassassin do any disk intensive things ?
> I'm running that gocr image scanning as well, could this benefit from
> it, or is it the network lookups that are the slow part in any case ?
> Currently a mail is processed in about 1.5 - 6 seconds
Ramdisk is no different than keeping it daemonized in ram except that
you'd still have to go through the spamassassin perl load. That is
why spamc/spamd exist.
>
> --
>
> A: Because it messes up the order Observation. Side posting has
> in which people normally read text. the best chance of preserving
> Q: Why is it such a bad thing? context, doesn't it?
> A: Top-posting
{^,-}
Re: Using a ramdisk
Posted by jdow <jd...@earthlink.net>.
From: "Bjorn Jensen" <bj...@info-connect.dk>
> Can spamassassin benefit in any way from a ramdisk ?
> The server we have for spamassassin, has 3 gigs of ram, and spamd
> doesn't even use 1 gig of that, so I thought perhaps it would speed
> things up if I could place something on a ramdisk. But this leads to the
> question, does spamassassin do any disk intensive things ?
> I'm running that gocr image scanning as well, could this benefit from
> it, or is it the network lookups that are the slow part in any case ?
> Currently a mail is processed in about 1.5 - 6 seconds
Ramdisk is no different than keeping it daemonized in ram except that
you'd still have to go through the spamassassin perl load. That is
why spamc/spamd exist.
>
> --
>
> A: Because it messes up the order Observation. Side posting has
> in which people normally read text. the best chance of preserving
> Q: Why is it such a bad thing? context, doesn't it?
> A: Top-posting
{^,-}
Re: Using a ramdisk
Posted by Bjorn Jensen <bj...@info-connect.dk>.
Daryl C. W. O'Shea wrote:
> Bjorn Jensen wrote:
>> Can spamassassin benefit in any way from a ramdisk ?
>> The server we have for spamassassin, has 3 gigs of ram, and spamd
>> doesn't even use 1 gig of that, so I thought perhaps it would speed
>> things up if I could place something on a ramdisk. But this leads to
>> the question, does spamassassin do any disk intensive things ?
>> I'm running that gocr image scanning as well, could this benefit from
>> it, or is it the network lookups that are the slow part in any case ?
>> Currently a mail is processed in about 1.5 - 6 seconds
>
> You could stick your /tmp partition on a ramdisk and in theory get a
> little more performance, but most of your 1.5 - 6 seconds is waiting
> for DNS queries to return (that's why it's so variable).
>
> If you're looking for more throughput, rather than a reduction in
> individual scan times, it sounds like you've got the memory for more
> children.
>
I was more hoping I could speed things up for the existing mails, since
our system is not struggling at the moment, and the mailserver is the
bottleneck, not the spamassassin server.
But I guess this answers my question, thanks :)
Bjorn
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is it such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting
Re: Using a ramdisk
Posted by "Daryl C. W. O'Shea" <sp...@dostech.ca>.
Bjorn Jensen wrote:
> Can spamassassin benefit in any way from a ramdisk ?
> The server we have for spamassassin, has 3 gigs of ram, and spamd
> doesn't even use 1 gig of that, so I thought perhaps it would speed
> things up if I could place something on a ramdisk. But this leads to the
> question, does spamassassin do any disk intensive things ?
> I'm running that gocr image scanning as well, could this benefit from
> it, or is it the network lookups that are the slow part in any case ?
> Currently a mail is processed in about 1.5 - 6 seconds
You could stick your /tmp partition on a ramdisk and in theory get a
little more performance, but most of your 1.5 - 6 seconds is waiting for
DNS queries to return (that's why it's so variable).
If you're looking for more throughput, rather than a reduction in
individual scan times, it sounds like you've got the memory for more
children.
Daryl