[vox-tech] mutt and swish (or other indexing systems)

[Karsten M. Self]

on Sun, Apr 03, 2005 at 08:23:36AM -0700, Doctorcam (cam at ellisonet.ca) wrote:
> * Karsten M. Self (kmself at ix.netcom.com) wrote:
> > So, I've got problems with some really big email archives.  And mutt
> > bogs heavily opening (or searching) same.
> 
> > So I _thought_ I had mutt's header cache working.  Well...  Just having
> > the hack compiled in isn't enough.  If you don't set "header_cache_ to a
> > location where the cache is maintained, you don't have it.
> 
> This made me go looking at my own.  Same thing - I never actually
> created the directory.
> 
> Thanks, Karsten - this was very helpful.

Innit just?

So the results.  First time opening a given folder, there's hit as the
index is built.  When reopening the folder when no mail's been added,
action's _far_ faster, though sorting contents still takes time.

The problem remains, though that when reading a large folder which has
been incrementally updated, there's still a long delay just moving
between messages.  E.g.:  debian-user, current 5749 messages, just took
4m50s or thereabouts going from viewing a message to displaying the
folder index.  Maildir format.  System load hit about 9 during this
process.

So it's an improvement, but still not bliss.

There's a related option, "header_cache_verify", which checks to see if
the folder's been modified by a non-mutt program.  I'm not sure if
procmail counts as same, but I'm going to try disabling this.  The
option (default=yes) requires one stat() per message in the folder for
each read of the folder.  Which sounds expensive over time.



Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
    She was asking about you earlier, Rick, in a way that made me
    extremely jealous.
    - Casablanca
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