Mail...

[Robert Dinse <nanook@eskimo.com>]

     In the process of attempting to optimize disk I/O on mx1, now holding the
mail spool; and crashing the machine in the process; I discovered a
configuration error with mail. 

     The result of this error is that when you access your mail box via POP,
the system was copying the mail spool from mx1 to mail back to mx1 via NFS, and
then reading from mx1 to mail via NFS again to download to your machine.  In
short, the file was being copied three times across the network instead of once
because of an error in the order that file systems were mounted. 

     This has been corrected; I've also optimized some of the I/O parameters
on mx1 and file system settings.

     Hopefully mail will go acceptably fast now, but if it doesn't I will
replace the LX that is presently serving as the POP server with a faster
machine. 

     I would be interested in feedback from people with respect to POP mail
response; is it better?  Does it still suck?