UC Davis Cyrus Incident September 2007

[Blake Hudson]

>
> Meanwhile, we hacked around this in a very cool way.  We copied the imapd
> process 60 times (assuming average of 12,000 processes, shooting for 200
> processes per executable, that is 60 individual executables).  These were
> named /usr/cyrus/bin/imapd_001 through /usr/cyrus/bin/imapd_060.  We then
> symlinked the "imapd" binary to imapd_001.  We then wrote a cron job that
> ran once a minute and relinked the imapd symlink to the next numbered
> executable, rotating around to imapd_001 when the end was reached.  This
> worked like a charm and *all* of our problems went away... In fact, our
> system has continued to get busier and we are still running pretty good.
>
>
> I don't think the hack is ideal, but man, does it work!
>
> Scott
That's the funniest hack I've heard in a long time. Interesting way to
'load balance' cyrus. Thanks for the laugh.
-B