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-rw-r--r--NEWS6
-rw-r--r--fetchmail-FAQ.html25
2 files changed, 27 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 9c20d7b8..e7a0bcd1 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@
(The `lines' figures total .c, .h, .l, and .y files under version control.)
+* Added FAQ item on performance under load.
+
fetchmail-5.3.3 (Mon Mar 13 16:34:29 EST 2000), 18763 lines:
* Fixed reporting of listener timeouts.
@@ -949,7 +951,7 @@ fetchmail-4.3.0 (Mon Oct 6 16:44:38 EDT 1997), 12304 lines:
* Created fetchmail-announce list.
There are 281 people on fetchmail-friends and 8 on fetchmail-announce.
-% fetchmail-friends list split
+% fetchmail list split
fetchmail-4.2.9 (Tue Sep 30 18:21:35 EDT 1997), 12185 lines:
* Don't byte-stuff when writing to an MDA.
@@ -1285,7 +1287,7 @@ fetchmail-3.9.1 (Thu Apr 17 11:37:14 EDT 1997), 8923 lines:
* Added `forcecr' to fix qmail problems by forcing CRLF termination.
There are 222 people on the fetchmail-friends list.
-% Bad addresses dropped after the switchover to SmartList
+% Bad addresses dropped after switch to SmartList
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
fetchmail-3.9.0 (Wed Apr 2 13:36:22 EST 1997), 8889 lines:
diff --git a/fetchmail-FAQ.html b/fetchmail-FAQ.html
index c856386a..6ac8fd77 100644
--- a/fetchmail-FAQ.html
+++ b/fetchmail-FAQ.html
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
<table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
<td width="30%">Back to <a href="index.html">Fetchmail Home Page</a>
<td width="30%" align=center>To <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
-<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2000/03/13 16:44:57 $
+<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2000/03/14 00:27:48 $
</table>
<HR>
<H1>Frequently Asked Questions About Fetchmail</H1>
@@ -40,6 +40,7 @@ IP address?</a><br>
<a href="#G12">G12. Is any special configuration needed to <em>send</em> mail?</a><br>
<a href="#G13">G13. Is fetchmail Y2K-compliant?</a><br>
<a href="#G14">G14. Is there a way in fetchmail to support disconnected IMAP mode?</a><br>
+<a href="#G15">G15. How will fetchmail perform under heavy loads?</a><br>
<h1>Build-time problems:</h1>
@@ -617,6 +618,26 @@ gateway between POP3/IMAP servers and SMTP. Disconnected operation
requires an elaborate interactive client. It's a very different problem.<p>
<hr>
+<h2><a name="G15">G15. How will fetchmail perform under heavy loads?</a></h2>
+
+Fetchmail streams message bodies line-by-line; the most core it
+ever requires per message is enough memory to hold the RFC822 header, and
+that storage is freed when body processing begins. It is, accordingly,
+quite economical in its use of memory.<p>
+
+After startup time, a fetchmail running in daemon mode stats its
+configuration file once per poll cycle to see whether it has changed
+and should be rescanned. Other than that, a fetchmail in normal
+operation doesn't touch the disk at all; that job is left up to the
+MTA or MDA the fetchmail talks to.<p>
+
+Fetchmail's performance is usually bottlenecked by latency on the POP
+server or (less often) on the TCP/IP link to the server. This is not
+a problem readily solved by tuning fetchmail, or even by buying more
+TCP/IP capacity (which tends to improve bandwidth but not necessarily
+latency).<p>
+
+<hr>
<h2><a name="B1">B1. Lex bombs out while building the fetchmail lexer.</a></h2>
In the immortal words of Alan Cox the last time this came up: ``Take
@@ -2747,7 +2768,7 @@ terminate it.<p>
<table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
<td width="30%">Back to <a href="index.html">Fetchmail Home Page</a>
<td width="30%" align=center>To <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
-<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2000/03/13 16:44:57 $
+<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2000/03/14 00:27:48 $
</table>
<P><ADDRESS>Eric S. Raymond <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com">&lt;esr@snark.thyrsus.com&gt;</A></ADDRESS>