On 2024/09/05 14:23, Johannes Thyssen Tishman wrote:
> 2024-09-05T12:09:51Z Stuart Henderson:
> > On 2024/09/05 12:52, Johannes Thyssen Tishman wrote:
> > > The email below was sent to the aerc-discuss mailing list a couple of
> > > days ago. Is it worth adding a pkg/README for this?
> > >
> > > 2024-09-03T23:12:23Z "Dylan D'silva" <dylan@dsilva.email>:
> > > Hello all,
> > >
> > > After some digging I've come to a solution. For those on a BSD system
> > > with large MAILDIR, you'll require something similar. Aerc uses
> > > github.com/fsnotify/fsnotify to monitor changes to files. BSD system
> > > rely on Kqueue which doesn't support recursive watching of files.
> > ^^
> > directories
> > > Therefore you require one file descriptor for each file.
> >
> > This does not seem to be a good approach for monitoring emails in
> > Maildirs on kqueue systems.
> >
> > Most of the common changes to a Maildir result in either a new file,
> > rename, or deletion and not actually changes to the contents of the
> > files. AFAIK new files won't show up without rescanning the whole
> > directory - for renamed files I don't think you can find the new
> > name so again you need to rescan - it seems like really it's just
> > going to need an efficient way to pick up changes in the dir.
> >
> > (I suppose this is not going to work well with NFS either which is
> > not an uncommon place to store Maildirs..)
> >
> > > Assuming you are running aerc from the current account. You can
> > > change the limit to match your maildir size.
> > >
> > > For me, I store my maildir in ~/Mail
> > > find . -type f | wc -l #counts number of files
> > > 71514
> > >
> > > I run aerc from a staff account. Therefore I updated my /etc/login.conf
> > > under staff to increase the openfile-cur size to 71600 and openfile-max
> > > to 72000
> > > :openfiles-cur=71600:\
> > > :openfiles-max=72000:\
> >
> > If you're going to do this, I would recommend a "normal" openfiles-cur,
> > just raise openfiles-max. Then start such software from a script or
> > shell alias which uses ulimit -n to raise the limit just for that
> > software.
> >
> > I think it would generally be better to run aerc pointed at an IMAP
> > server though (obviously the IMAP server can just run on the machine
> > running aerc if wanted).
> >
> > > If you use a large login.conf you might want create a database version
> > > with cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf see login.conf(5).
> >
> > We are mostly not running on computer systems from the 80s and the file
> > is not really slow to parse - however having the db files around does
> > cause trouble when someone forgets to rerun cap_mkdb after changing the
> > file later. I would not recommend this.
>
> Thanks for the feedback Stuart. Should this advice be included in a
> pkg/README as it is done for syncthing?
It would be better if the situation was improved upstream, but we
could do...
Rather than documenting the workaround I think it's probably better if
we go for this approach. Setting the OS to allow opening of tens of
thousands of files is very much not ideal, and imagine what it would
be like if you have a couple of users on the machine, all of whom want
to run aerc...
Index: Makefile
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/ports/mail/aerc/Makefile,v
diff -u -p -r1.16 Makefile
--- Makefile 31 Jul 2024 18:36:02 -0000 1.16
+++ Makefile 5 Sep 2024 12:52:52 -0000
@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@ MODGO_MODNAME = git.sr.ht/~rjarry/aerc
MODGO_VERSION = v0.0.0-20240729220005-e037c095a049
V = 0.18.2
+REVISION = 0
DISTNAME = aerc-$V
CATEGORIES = mail
Index: pkg/PLIST
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/ports/mail/aerc/pkg/PLIST,v
diff -u -p -r1.9 PLIST
--- pkg/PLIST 31 Jul 2024 18:36:02 -0000 1.9
+++ pkg/PLIST 5 Sep 2024 12:52:52 -0000
@@ -43,4 +43,5 @@ share/aerc/templates/forward_as_body
share/aerc/templates/new_message
share/aerc/templates/quoted_reply
share/applications/aerc.desktop
+share/doc/pkg-readmes/${PKGSTEM}
@tag update-desktop-database
Index: pkg/README
===================================================================
RCS file: pkg/README
diff -N pkg/README
--- /dev/null 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 -0000
+++ pkg/README 5 Sep 2024 12:52:52 -0000
@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
++-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+| Running ${PKGSTEM} on OpenBSD
++-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+aerc's Maildir support on BSD uses kqueue(2), which is really intended for
+watching individual files rather than large directories or trees. It requires
+a file handle to be opened for each file in the monitored directories, which
+will soon exceed default limits in the system.
+
+It is therefore recommended to run an IMAP daemon (for example Dovecot,
+courier-imap, imap-uw) and connect over IMAP, even if this is just to the
+local machine.
