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From: Ram on 21 Jul 2010 02:01
One server of ours just accepts the mails from clients and then relays
the mails to other servers.
Since there is almost no mail queued on the server , I think it is will
be good to mount /var/spool/postfix on a tmpfs partition.

The machine ( linux Centos 5.4 + postfix 2.7 ) has enough Memory free
all the time.

The ramdisk seems to work great. But sporadically some smtp clients are
getting an error
"Insufficient system storage"

When will this happen ? Does postfix find not enough space on the
ramdisk ? How can I find when this occurs ?


Thanks
Ram

From: Wietse Venema on 21 Jul 2010 06:39
Ram:
> One server of ours just accepts the mails from clients and then relays
> the mails to other servers.
> Since there is almost no mail queued on the server , I think it is will
> be good to mount /var/spool/postfix on a tmpfs partition.
>
> The machine ( linux Centos 5.4 + postfix 2.7 ) has enough Memory free
> all the time.
>
> The ramdisk seems to work great. But sporadically some smtp clients are
> getting an error
> "Insufficient system storage"
>
> When will this happen ?

Look in your maillog file, and perhaps in your KERNEL log.

> Does postfix find not enough space on the
> ramdisk ?

The KERNEL looks for space, not Postfix. Do not blame the messenger
(Postfix) for bad news from the kernel.

Wietse

From: Victor Duchovni on 21 Jul 2010 12:29
On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 06:39:07AM -0400, Wietse Venema wrote:

> > One server of ours just accepts the mails from clients and then relays
> > the mails to other servers.
> > Since there is almost no mail queued on the server , I think it is will
> > be good to mount /var/spool/postfix on a tmpfs partition.

[ Following up on the OP's post second-hand, not Wietse's ]

Also don't ask for trouble (memory exhaustion and/or email loss) by
running Postfix on ramdisk. It is not a good idea. Your intuition about
the value of this is misguided.

--
Viktor.

From: Wietse Venema on 21 Jul 2010 15:22
Ram:
> One server of ours just accepts the mails from clients and then relays
> the mails to other servers.
> Since there is almost no mail queued on the server , I think it is will
> be good to mount /var/spool/postfix on a tmpfs partition.

You will lose all mail in the queue when the system crashes.
I agree with Victor that this is a really bad idea.

Wietse

From: Stan Hoeppner on 21 Jul 2010 17:54
Wietse Venema put forth on 7/21/2010 2:22 PM:
> Ram:
>> One server of ours just accepts the mails from clients and then relays
>> the mails to other servers.
>> Since there is almost no mail queued on the server , I think it is will
>> be good to mount /var/spool/postfix on a tmpfs partition.
>
> You will lose all mail in the queue when the system crashes.
> I agree with Victor that this is a really bad idea.

+3

If you truly have a _need_ for a super fast Postfix queue, I suggest using a
good quality wear leveling SSD. You'll get random I/O performance many times
greater than a 15k rpm disk, but with data persistence, unlike when using a
ramdisk queue. There are many fast good quality SSDs available in various
capacities for between $100-200 USD, in standard 2.5" and 3.5" hard disk
mounting form factors.

--
Stan

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