saslauthd performance

[Axel Grupe]

Igor Brezac wrote:

>
> On Mon, 15 Nov 2004, Axel Grupe wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I got performance problems with saslauth daemon. I`m using debian 
>> with cyrus 2.1.16 and saslauthd 2.1.19 for authentication.
>> The saslauthd is configured to use pam, which itself uses mysql for 
>> password-verification.
>>
>> I test the system with 50 perl-script in the background from another 
>> machine, which makes continuous pop3-connections to my server.
>>
>> So, the problem is, if I just take one user for the 
>> perl-authentification-test,  cyrus or better the saslauthd can handle 
>> up to 7000 queries per minute.
>> But, if there isn`t only one user but rather 45.000 users, which will 
>> be connected through the perl-scripts. The performance goes down to 
>> ~1000 queries per minute.
>> I don`t think this causes of pam or mysql, because if saslauthd uses 
>> directly ldap (just al little test of me) saslauthd just handles the 
>> same (~1000) queries per minute.
>
>
> If you want to test the speed of saslauthd alone, do not use pop3 to 
> test the authentication.  It seems to me you are bound by the speed of 
> cyrus-imapd rather than saslauthd.  saslauthd/ldap can do way more 
> than 1000 auths per minute.
>
>> Another test: if I use auxprop in cyrus with mysql, it goes at least 
>> down to 150 queries per minute.
>>
>> I fixed some params of saslauthd like -c, -n (0), -t  ... but it 
>> didn`t get fast!!!
>
>
> -n 0 will make it slower...
>
Hey, you're right.

I performed a test for my saslauthd, it makes 1000 authentications 
within ~ 6,65 seconds (not bad!), and it still uses pam-> mysql.
If I make the same test with saslauthd using ldap it goes "down" to ~ 
6,625. In deed these where cached by saslauthd.
When I restart saslauthd the performance is for mysql : ~ 11,22 and for 
ldap ~14,72 seconds, which is in deed a little bit funny!
But it doesn't matter because of  cyrus won't get that fast to come over 
this.
(at least i use this PARAMS="${PARAMS}  -n 5 -c -s 2048 -t 600 ")

Thanks a lot, know it's time to tune cyrus!

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