excessive incoming connections?

I'm running an IMAP and POP server on Linux Redhat 8
for 300 users. Users have been complaing about the
service being unavailable.

When this happens the log shows the entries like the following.

-----------from /var/log messages------------------
Sep 18 09:25:24 mail2 xinetd[28101]: Deactivating
service imap due to excessive incoming connections.
Restarting in 10 seconds.
---------------------------------------------------

I'm running these services through xinetd with the following
xinetd.conf entries.

service imap
{
flags = REUSE
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
instances = 1000
log_type = FILE /var/log/imap.log
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/imapd
}

service pop-3
{
flags = REUSE
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
instances = 1000
log_type = FILE /var/log/pop3.log
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/ipop3d
}

I see there's a "max_load" option in the man page. But
can't find what the numbers mean (load per minute?).

Thanks for any info.

Bazzz

bazzz777 wrote:

> I'm running an IMAP and POP server on Linux Redhat 8
> for 300 users. Users have been complaing about the
> service being unavailable.
>
> I'm running these services through xinetd

....WHY ?

"man xinetd" *specifically* states that this is only recommended if you are
running servers that do not need to be available all of the time but only,
say, once or twice a day at most!

The startup cost of ANY daemon run through xinetd is far greater than when
running the daemon as a stand-alone master process - read the manual!

That would be step 1, then : run these servers as standalone processes and
don't be too stingy with resource allocation or maximum processes... then
see what happens.

I run a mail server and imap server on my home system and I'm practically
the only user - and _I_ run imapd as a stand-alone process!

The only difference it will make for your server system is a slightly higher
memory requirement and a very very little bit of cpu overhead...

Don't be too cheap on that machine!

For 300 imap users you should plug in at least 128~256 MB RAM.

RAM is cheap - very cheap.

--
Jeroen Geilman

Gentoo 1.4 rc4

Jeroen Geilman <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<3f6b4326$0$58701$(E-Mail Removed)>...
> bazzz777 wrote:
>
> > I'm running an IMAP and POP server on Linux Redhat 8
> > for 300 users. Users have been complaing about the
> > service being unavailable.
> >
> > I'm running these services through xinetd
>
> ...WHY ?
>

You are right. I should probably run these as stand-alone services.
I use xinetd out of habit. Plus I like the added control options.

The problem was fixed by upgrading from xientd version 2.3.10 to 2.3.12.

Thanks for the feedback.

Bazzz