[tpop3d-discuss]tpop unable to handle load

Richard Stockton tpop3d at richardleestockton.org
Wed, 08 Sep 2004 14:24:49 -0700


Hi there,

I work for an ISP that handles about 3 million emails per day.
We use postfix for that (works great!).

We also handle pop3 for about 5500 users, and we have been using
tpop3d (version 1.5.3) for that.  However, it doesn't seem to be
keeping up with the load.  When it gets to 20 or so people popping
at the same time, it starts complaining and dropping connections.
I have upped the max children to 100 in both main.c and netloop.c,
but I still get a LOT of these messages;

Sep  8 13:42:56 mail tpop3d[94605]: listeners_post_select: rejected 
connection from nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn to local address nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn:110 owing 
to high load

Should tpop3d be able to handle 20+ simultaneous connections?  If
so, what am I doing wrong?  If not, can anyone recommend something
else that will handle high loads?  Preferably something that has
hooks into mysql so I can easily do pop-before-smtp.

System Info:  FreeBSD 5.0 box with dual 733MGhz processors, 1 gig
of RAM and multiple harddrives (about 100 Gigs in all).  This box
runs both postfix (maildir) and tpop3d, but only tpop has problems.

Thanks in advance for any help.
  - Richard Stockton