3.3. Filesystems
For sendmail-based gateways, the single most common cause for a performance bottleneck is the rate at which files can be created and deleted in the mail queue directory, /var/spool/mqueue or its equivalent. The details of the implementation of the filesystem on which these messages are stored can contribute greatly to the overall performance of an email server. This section will discuss these issues.
3.3.1. FFS-Based Filesystems
Most of the more commonly used UNIX file systems are based on the venerable Fast File System (FFS) [MJLF84]. While this filesystem has been a workhorse for UNIX systems for more than 15 years, its characteristics can easily lead to performance problems under some types of loads. For instance, it does ...
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