How to speed up email delivery?

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#1 Tue, 11/06/2007 - 20:17
spazzwig

How to speed up email delivery?

Hey all,

I'm running a default Vmin Pro install on Debian Etch, with Dovecot and Postfix. I'm also pretty much a complete novice when it comes to serving email.

Currently it takes several minutes before an email received by the server is delivered to the mailbox. I'd like to reduce this delay as much as is practical. I'm often on the phone with a client as they send info, attachments, etc and waiting 5 minutes for it to be received in my email client is a little disruptive.

So... can anyone give me some direction as to what settings affect this? I see the timings area in Postfix but don't really want to mess with it without understanding it better, or even knowing if it's relevant.

I would also love it if there is someplace that has info on some best practices type standard configs for setting up the email services, if there are any notable ones that you guys are aware of.

Thanks, Gabe<br><br>Post edited by: spazzwig, at: 2007/11/06 20:41

Mon, 11/19/2007 - 23:49
trendzetter

Maybe you should post some lines from the log in order to determine if the delay is on your server. Please look for lines mentioning delay in /var/log/mail.log
Delays are usually the result of overloaded servers, <b>greylisting</b> or dns-problems.

Tue, 11/20/2007 - 01:34
Joe
Joe's picture

Whenever I hear the word &quot;slow&quot;, my first instinct is to blame your DNS, and this is no exception.

Check to be sure your DNS service is fast and correct. Check reverse resolution of your server (it doesn't have to be &quot;right&quot;, it just has to respond quickly with something reasonably sane looking). Check forward resolution of the box hostname, and the names of the servers you're sending to or receiving from. If all of those are fast and correct, then check the maillog or mail.log and let us know what you see when sending one of these slow messages.

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Wed, 11/21/2007 - 13:13
spazzwig

Thanks for the replies.

All my DNS settings test fine using the dnsstuff.com tools. Is there something beyond what those test I should look at? Testing hostnames in all directions appear (to my rather unexperienced eye) to be correct and plenty responsive.

Here is a bit from my mail.log when receiving an email. The initial communication is very fast, but it seems to sit in the queue for roughly 300 seconds before being delivered to the mailbox:

Nov 20 04:18:15 server postfix/smtpd[9985]: disconnect from cpanel52.gzo.com[67.19.41.146]
Nov 20 04:21:35 server postfix/anvil[9987]: statistics: max connection rate 1/60s for (smtp:67.19.41.146) at Nov 20 04:18:14
Nov 20 04:21:35 server postfix/anvil[9987]: statistics: max connection count 1 for (smtp:67.19.41.146) at Nov 20 04:18:14
Nov 20 04:21:35 server postfix/anvil[9987]: statistics: max cache size 1 at Nov 20 04:18:14
Nov 20 04:23:48 server postfix/local[9990]: 2EBD8F3C57: to=&lt;mailbox@hostname.example.com&gt;, orig_to=&lt;user@example.com&gt;, relay=local, delay=333, delays=0.1/0.05/0/333, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (delivered to command: /usr/bin/procmail-wrapper -o -a $DOMAIN -d $LOGNAME)
Nov 20 04:23:48 server postfix/qmgr[32463]: 2EBD8F3C57: removed

The delay=333 line stands out to me, but I'm not sure what to do with it, what/where settings that affect it are (supposing it is in fact relevant). Note: email/server names changed to generic to avoid any spambot spiders, let me know if they are needed for some reason.

Thanks for any direction,
Gabe

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