Author Topic: Very slow with many messages  (Read 9865 times)

nejko

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Very slow with many messages
« on: July 14, 2007, 03:37:09 AM »
Hello,

I have a RoundCube installation (06/08/2007 from SVN - the latest FreeBSD port) on a FreeBSD 6.2 server (latest PHP 5 with APC, MySQL 5, Apache 2.0). It is a HP ProLiant ML110 G4 machine (Xeon 3040 Dual-Core) with 1GB of RAM. I run latest Dovecot as POP3 and IMAP server.

The ping time from the client machine to the server is 10ms and the bandwidth 5Mbit/s from the server to the client and 768kb/s from client to the server (these are effective speeds; the server has optical connection to the provider while the client has cable connection, so there is no PPPoE or something).

I have a mailbox with 77266 messages altogether (in 28 folders). There are 3500 mails in the INBOX and about 14800 mails in the 'FreeBSD' folder, for example.

When I login into RoundCube, it takes 7 seconds to display the folders and the listing of the INBOX folder, but it takes another 58 seconds (!) to unfreeze the browser (and mark the folders, which contain unread messages, bold). So it is completely useless; I don't think it is normal to wait so long in order to open a webmail client.

If I click on the 'FreeBSD' folder it takes 13 seconds to display the listing. If I then click on the INBOX folder again, it takes 10 seconds to display the listing. I think these times are way too big for normal usage. And I don't think my Maildir is that big, it's just the mails of last 2 years.

During the "waiting" time, the IMAP server processor usage is 98%. It seems to me, that RoundCube does some very inefficient IMAP work since Horde/IMP for example, doesn't do that. It takes a while (but not 1 minute) to login, but then it is quite fast.

My Dovecot is tuned to be fast (I don't use fsyncing at the moment) and it actually is fast when using Thunderbird for example. I also use RoundCube caching (it's even a bit slower if turned off) although the IMAP server and the web server are on the same hardware.

Do you guys have any ideas if I am missing something here or it is really just RoundCube being inefficient in IMAP communication?

I really like RoundCube but it's useless until it is so slow with lots of messages. I think this should be a priority for developers.

Thanks,
Nejc


GunFro

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Re: Very slow with many messages
« Reply #1 on: July 14, 2007, 09:43:46 PM »
......................
« Last Edit: July 16, 2011, 12:32:27 PM by GunFro »

nejko

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Re: Very slow with many messages
« Reply #2 on: July 15, 2007, 02:30:48 AM »
Quote from: GunFro
77266 messages........
Well I'm for saving too, but this sound much.
I would archive some of it.

Archive it? What that actually means? If that means that I should create another folder and put older stuff there, the folder would still be searched when I login into RC. Do you mean unsubscribe from it too? I didn't try that, perhaps this should make things faster.

However, I think 10 seconds to open a 3500 messages-heavy INBOX, is still too much and 3500 messages is not that much. I would understand if this only happened once and then it would work faster. But it doesn't. It happens every time I click the INBOX. I guess I will try to tcpdump the local interface and see what is happening on IMAP port and compare it to what is happening when using Horde.

Quote from: GunFro
I use Thunderbird some time to, it's faster yes.
RC may not be fast but it's the best webmail around.

The thing I miss is searching messages by explicit properties, for example (subject, sender, ...). If one needs that, this can't be the best webmail around for him.

Thanks,
Nejc

Offline robo45h

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Re: Very slow with many messages
« Reply #3 on: April 04, 2008, 11:59:46 AM »
I just installed RoundCube for the first time (0.1) and I have to agree with the original post: it is completely unusably slow on a large folder (including my Inbox). The suggestion to "archive" messages is not acceptable for two reasons. First, if you archive all the messages to another folder, then that folder becomes slow. So you have solved nothing. Second, no other IMAP email package requires me to keep my folder size small.

My Inbox: Over 10k messages, nearly 200 unread at present. (I've read the subject line, which is sometimes enough for me, thank you.)

Thunderbird: No problem.
SquirrelMail: No problem.
RoundCube: Unusably slow.

All of the above were tested connected to the same IMAP server, which is running on the same computer as SquirrelMail and RoundCube (Thunderbird was run on a separate client system.) Since RoundCube is on the same system as the IMAP server, I tried disabling the database cache of messages, but that had no noticeable effect. The back end email server is also on the same local system (It's QMail Courier IMAP) under Ubuntu. Yes, the hardware is underpowered, but SquirrelMail performs fine.

In addition to the general "load time" performance to display the Inbox, the "check for new messages" feature basically fails to work properly 99% of the time when the Inbox is this big. The little "Checking for new messages" window appears, but when it finishes, the Inbox is not updated with new messages. If I click on the "Check For New Messages" icon, the same thing happens (i.e., the "Checking for new messages" window appears, eventually exits, but the Inbox is not properly updated). With a user with a smaller Inbox, the feature works fine.

RoundCube will not make any serious inroads into the web mail business until it can handle large folders. I know people that have much bigger folders than I.

I saw posts from a year or two ago that someone had modded the code to use server-side sorting to improve performance. Are those changes integrated into the 0.1 release? I will say this: SquirrelMail performance sucks just as bad if you disable server-side sorting (it's configurable in SquirrelMail).

Offline DanB

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Re: Very slow with many messages
« Reply #4 on: April 04, 2008, 04:49:55 PM »
I have 1800 emails, my login time is 20 sec.


Offline altex

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Re: Very slow with many messages
« Reply #5 on: April 17, 2008, 08:48:32 AM »
Hi all

I installed RoundCube for use with gmail account through imap. Login time is 5 seconds, but inbox is small. When i access my Gmail/All Mail folder with 31854 messages (>1Gb used space) it takes 5 seconds! So i think the problem discussed above is a imap server related problem, please check it up.


Offline rmwebs

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Very slow with many messages
« Reply #6 on: September 13, 2009, 07:17:13 AM »
Sorry to bump this back up, but why has this stil not been addressed?

I've got just over 20k emails coming from gmail. Usng imap it is taking approx 4 minutes. Its not like its a problem between me and roundcube, because its running locally!

I was about to start designing  new skin for large inboxes however how can I possibly do that with such poor connectivity?! :(

Offline oldschool

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Very slow with many messages
« Reply #7 on: September 13, 2009, 11:31:20 AM »
It all is depending of the running IMAP-Server, it´s configuration and it´s connection bandwidth.

I have no performance problems with thousands of emails.
I found switching caching off gives me more perfomance, but it has something to do with my IMAP...



Rgds.
« Last Edit: September 13, 2009, 11:33:47 AM by oldschool »

Offline rosali

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Very slow with many messages
« Reply #8 on: September 13, 2009, 03:04:49 PM »
Just a side note: To enable caching is only recommended (IMO) if IMAP server does not reside on same machine as RoundCube does.
Regards,
Rosali
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MyRoundcube Project (commercial)

Offline tofinoguy

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Very slow with many messages
« Reply #9 on: September 13, 2009, 07:52:26 PM »
This has been a problem for us too. Roundcube is not being hosted on the same server so it is significantly aggrivating the issue. My inbox (approx 4000 messages) takes between 3-5 minutes to load.

Once it's open, it will also begin to display strange behaviour such as randomly displaying the text SERVICE NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE at the top of the page.

We have several users that are frustrated by Roundcube but I still haven't found anything that has the same functionality (multiple sender identities and signatures, spell check, etc.) to replace it with. With each new version (we've been using it since before the first stable release) I hope the performance improvements will help us out, but so far, no dice. Is there anything I can do on my end to help with performance issues? We're running Roundcube on mediatemple's grid cluster and using their IMAP server.

Offline oldschool

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Very slow with many messages
« Reply #10 on: September 14, 2009, 04:04:22 PM »
Quote from: rosali;21220
Just a side note: To enable caching is only recommended (IMO) if IMAP server does not reside on same machine as RoundCube does.


Thanks!!! Make sense... ;-)


Rgds.