[Arm-dev] Sharing experiences running a mail server on a Cubetruck

Sun Dec 20 03:23:42 UTC 2015
Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com>

I have indicated that I have been running my mail server on a Cubietruck.

It is running well enough for the past 270+ days since last boot. It 
supports 4 domains and receives ~5K messages per day, most spam. There 
are around a dozen users of this server.  So not a big server, but what 
may be common for in a SOHO environment.

My one complaint is how the anti-virus scanning software can temporarily 
tie up both cores.  This is sometimes noticable when I (or one of the 
other users) send an email (via imap - dovecot) and wait frm some 
seconds until the message starts to upload.  Since getting mail is 
typically a background function, delays caused by big anti-virus scans 
don't show.  Same with the actual receiving and sending of mail by postfix.

So I would recommend using a 4 core board, like the Wandboard, and 
somehow limiting the anti-virus software to 3 of the cores so one is 
available for actual mail work.  I don't know how to limit services to 
specific cores so this would work.  I suppose that even on the 
Cubietruck, you could limit the anti-virus to one of the cores. Perhaps 
Cubietech will actually come out with their 4 core server board as they 
have hinted at on their site, and we will quickly have a uboot to 
support it.  Until then the Wandboard looks really good (and I think 
there is a BananaPi or OrangePi that is a 4 core with sata).

Of course it may be once I get Centos7 running with this software mix, I 
will be pleasantly supprised that things are better scheduled so that 
imap uploads do not get held up by other tasks like anit-virus scanning 
of big attachments.

Or someone here will show me a simple way to change service priorities 
to get things working better.

I think this is the only real performance issue I have on my server.  
But then I have not tested DANE yet either...