Larry Augustin <lma(_at_)valinux(_dot_)com>:
In my experience the local MDA is negligible. I use "cat", and even on
a fast link fetchmail still scrolls slowly past on the screen fetching
one message at a time.
That's useful information. It suggests that the real culprit is IMAP
server latency. Unfortunately fetchmail can't do anything about that.
A better test (which I will run) is to profile fetchmail while it's
fetching, set -s to suppress logging, and look at the percent time
spent in socket read and write calls. If your `cat' data point is
correct, I'll find that the execution time is completely dominated
by the socket waits.
Which by the way is the same result I would expect from rsync -- the
difference is that rsync doesn't have to handshake with a heavyweight
server that's adding a lot of its own latency.
Maybe there's nothing that can be done because of the IMAP protocol, but
it sure seems like a darn slow way to get mail.
Larry (whose favorite way to get mail is still rsync)
Yeah, but how do you deal with locking? That is, what happens
if rsync tries to grab the mailbox while it's being appended to?
I can imagine several outcomes, none of them good.
--
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for
one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because
it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils
except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of
such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined
to commit crimes.
-- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book