Thread: Problems: sorting and slow performance

I can't turn off threadsort or stop advertising sort in my IMAP server since I have other IMAP clients that depend on this.

Instead, I headed into program/lib/imap.inc
on line 849 (or thereabouts, in function iil_C_Sort)

and changed this line

Code:

        $command  = 's ' . $is_uid . 'SORT (' . $field . ') ';

to this:

Code:

        if ($field == 'DATE' && !$add) {
            /* courier sends back headers sorted by date already - but if you ask it to sort by date it gets sloooow */
            $command  = 's ' . $is_uid;
        } else {
            $command  = 's ' . $is_uid . 'SORT (' . $field . ') ';
        }

(new version 3/6/2009 restores filtering functionality in 0.2-stable)

So now if the default sort-by-date is requested, the SORT command isn't passed to courier at all. Suddenly my RoundCube is blazing fast (unless I sort by something else, like size... but that I can live with).

If any developers are reading this thread, it would be nice to add a config option for this.
-tom

Nice hack tom it works pretty fine.
I support your suggestion to add a configuration option.

We too were having excessive speed problems - most noticeable for people with very large inboxes. Using this has sped up the initial load time of roundcube substantially.

Our admins are currently looking in to the SORT command issue here to see if there is a better way to make the request to the IMAP server. Will post back if we find anything.

I have since switched to dovecot. I was fed up with slow search performance from courier.

The transition was surprisingly painless. I strongly recommend it to anyone that is still using courier imap.

To really take advantage of dovecot's auto-indexing, I am on the lookout for a good advanced search plugin for rc.