Slow webmail responses, mass violations using chrome (jquery and worldclient.dll) | MDaemon Technologies, Ltd.

Slow webmail responses, mass violations using chrome (jquery and worldclient.dll)


  • I have for some time being fighting with slow responces, making webmail GUI unusable, not normaly an issue as most of our clients use 3rd party mail clients, however with the now possible ingration with google drive (more on that later) clients are looking to switch to webmail as the main client when on LAN.

    After much playing arround and diagnosis I decided to look at what was happening via the brower tools, this is what I found: mdaemon - slow webmail responses

    This seems to be affecting all aspects of webmail functions from login, viewing directories and messages it can take over 10s just to log in, often more, and that nothign compaired to waitng for a message to display when trying to view, this happens on all browsers that I used so far, but edge does seem to be a tad better.

    I tried everying from using 'Ludicrous Speed' hardware to raising CPU prority levels on the verious mdaemon services, however that seems not to be the issue, webmail showed no improverment.

    Im now running out of options, any advise would be greatly apprciated. 



  • What theme is being used?

    Are you running webmail via IIS or its own webserver?

    Do all users that use webmail have the issue or only some?

    If its only some users, how large are the mailboxes of the users?  How many folders do they have?

    If you turn off the Instant messenger in webmail by logging into webmail as the user and going to Option / Personalize, then uncheck the box for "Enable MDaemon's Instant Messaging feature in browser" is their an improvement in responsiveness for that user?

    If you turn on the options for Skip Initial mail check and collapse my nested folders, both found under Options / Personalize in webmail, does the responsiveness improve?

    How many public folders do you have? 

    Is there a lot of content in MDaemon's public folder directory that is not available as public folders in MDaemon?

     


  • Hi Arron, :)

    1. Theame used: WorldClient
    2. Front end: Mdaemon native Webmail
    3. All users '15 users' use Webmail internally and normalt some for of client on there phone, so far 3party mail client don't seem to have any issues.
    4. All users have this issue, that I checked with.
    5. When Instant messenger set to off/disabled for good measure (XMPP) no difference (was my first action)
    6. How meny public folders: 27.9GGb containing 3288 folders with 713,298 files
    7. Options for Skip Initial mail check and collapse my nested folders are set to on and default.

    Hope that helps


  • What do you have the default list refresh time set to for the users?

    Are users hiding unsubscribed folders?

    Change the public folder path in MDaemon to point to an empty directory by editing the MDaemon.ini file in the MDaemon\app directory. Set the PublicFolders= value in the
    [Directories] section to point to MDaemon\Public Folders2, where Public Folders2 is a brand new emtpy directory that you just created. Save the file and restart MDaemon and Webmail.  Does webmail perform better now?

    How do you have the drives organized on the server?  Is the operating system and MDaemon all running on the same drive?

    What types of drives are you using?

    Are you using RAID, if you what what type of RAID?

     


  • Hello, 

    I have the same problem, any ideas? When I change the path of the public folder = same result.

    Webmail is quite slow to load, but the slowness is most noticeable in : 
    - Opening a mail (with a simple click to display its preview or a double click to open it in another window).
    - Moving from one folder to another

    The most annoying thing is that these slowdowns don't always occur on the same users/mails/PC.

    MDaemon version: 23.5.1
    Theme used: WordClient
    110 accounts
    16 CPUS
    12Gb RAM

    Translated with DeepL.com (free version)


  • Are you running webmail via IIS or its own webserver?

    Do all users experience the issue?

    How large are the mailboxes of the users?  How many folders do they have?

    If you turn off the Instant messenger in webmail by logging into webmail as the user and going to Option / Personalize, then uncheck the box for "Enable MDaemon's Instant Messaging feature in browser" is their an improvement in responsiveness for that user?

    Are users hiding unsubscribed folders?

    If you turn on the options for Skip Initial mail check and collapse my nested folders, both found under Options / Personalize in webmail, does the responsiveness improve?

    How many public folders do you have? 

    Is there a lot of content in MDaemon's public folder directory that is not available as public folders in MDaemon?

    How do you have the drives organized on the server?  Is the operating system and MDaemon all running on the same drive?

    What types of drives are you using?

    Are you using RAID, if you what what type of RAID?


  • Hello and thank you for your reply. Here are my answers to your questions:

    - Webmail is on the same webserver, no IIS.
    - All users experience these slowdowns.
    - The size of mailboxes varies from a few hundred MB to several tens of GB, with a fairly variable number of folders.
    - Unchecking MDIM doesn't bring any noticeable performance improvement.
    - I'm not familiar with the notion of unsubscribed folders, but personally I don't have any and I'm also subject to slowdowns. Where is this option?
    - Unchecking Skip Initial mail check and collapse my nested folders doesn't bring any noticeable performance improvement.
    - Concerning public folders, I have 55000 files, 68 folders for a total of almost 20GB
    - What do you mean by "Is there a lot of content in MDaemon's public folder directory that is not available as public folders in MDaemon?" I don't see this option
    - OS and Mdaemon are on the same disk, but user folders, logs and public folders are on a different disk.
    - My server is connected to my datastore with SAS connectivity, with RAID5 disks reference DELL RT8MY - 900GB 15K 2.5 SAS 12G

     


  • - Webmail is on the same webserver, no IIS.

    Webmail must be running on the same server as MDaemon.  It is possible to install IIS on the MDaemon server and run webmail via IIS.

    - I'm not familiar with the notion of unsubscribed folders, but personally I don't have any and I'm also subject to slowdowns. Where is this option?

    In webmail go to Options / Folders, there is an option for Hide Unsubscribed folders. This allows users to choose which folders they see.  If they have access to folders they do not need or want to see, then they go to Options / Folders, find them in the folder list, and unsubscribe from them.  If they find they do need access to folders that they have unsubscribed from, they can go back to the same page and resubscribe to the folders.

    - Unchecking Skip Initial mail check and collapse my nested folders doesn't bring any noticeable performance improvement.

    You'll need to make these changes for all users.

    I'd also like to have you raise the list refresh time to something higher than 1 minute.  

    You can force these options to be enabled for users by editing the \MDaemon\WorldClient\domains.ini file.  

    [Default:UserOverrides]
    SkipInitialMailCheck=Yes
    HideUnsubscribedFolders=Yes
    AlwaysCollapseFolders=Yes
    ListRefreshTime=3

    Save the file, and resetart webmail.

    Then have all of your users login to webmail and go to options \ folders.  Unsubscribe from any folders (personal, shared, or public) that they do not need access to. 

    - What do you mean by "Is there a lot of content in MDaemon's public folder directory that is not available as public folders in MDaemon?"

    We have seen customers in the past, simply rename a public folder on disk so that MDaemon no longer shows the folder or content.  This makes MDaemon server no longer serves the content, but it still has an impact on reading from the public folders.  If you are doing this, please move all of the folders that no longer need to be served to users out of the MDaemon\Public Folders\ directory.

    Based on the details you've provided, I think you are reaching the maximum performance of your hard drives.  All of the suggested changes above are intended to reduce disk I/O and improve performance.  Without doing more testing, I can't tell for sure which drives can't keep up, but I would guess its the datastore with the RAID 5 setup. 

    If you'd like to try to further reduce the disk activity on the datastore, move the Logs to the same disk that the OS and MDaemon are on.  Or add a seperate disk for logs.  

    If you'd like to do further testing, please setup performance monitor to monitor the disk queue lengths for all drives, reading and writing.  

    I'd also suggest using a tool from Microsoft called diskspd.exe.  

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/hci/manage/diskspd-overview

    Lastly, we have made some performance improvements for MDaemon 23.5.2 that may help.  We are making improvements to further reduce disk i/o.  We do not currently have an release date for 23.5.2, but it should be getting sent to the beta team in the near future.


  • Hello, 

    I'm sorry for my late return, but I've taken some time to get to grips with the slowness and I've been able to reduce some of it by reorganizing/optimizing my IT infrastructure, and of course testing your recommendations. Thank you very much.

    What I've noticed today is that the latest slowness is due to shared folders, which correspond to department mailboxes, or the mail folders of an absent employee. But we can't do without these folders.

    When I activate the "HideUnsubscribeFolders=Yes" option, performance is good: a single click on a mail opens the preview on the right instantly, and a double-click opens the mail almost instantly too.

    As soon as I switch back to the "HideUnsubscribeFolders=No" option, performance degrades and also impacts mail from our personal mailboxes, which I find hard to understand! How can I explain this strong impact?


  • When you set HideUnsubscribedFolders=Yes, webmail only has to check the folders that the user is subsribed to.  When you set HideUnsubscribedFolders=No, it must check all folders that the user has access to.  


  • Okay, I see, but why is it so slow to open a simple e-mail?

    Why does webmail check every time you open an e-mail?

    It's ok there's a global check when we connect to webmail, but why do it every time we click on an e-mail?

    Are there other options for finding a happy medium?

    A lot of questions, but I'd like to understand and find a solution, rather than thinking that we've reached the limits of the MDaemon product :/.


  • Okay, I see, but why is it so slow to open a simple e-mail?

    Most likely because the drives are unable to keep up with the volume of reading that occurs when webmail is looking at all folders.  

    Why does webmail check every time you open an e-mail?

    Webmail is not looking at all folders every time you open an email.  When you have webmail configured to check all folders it generates more disk I/O when it is doing things like checking for new messages in folders.  On your server that I/O seems to be sufficient to slow down response times when doing things like opening an email.  

    Are there other options for finding a happy medium?

    There are only 3 options.  

    1. Improve the capabilities of the disks being used

    RAID 5 arrays are not known for their speed.  Changing this to a RAID 1 or RAID 10 array would probably perform better in situations when large amounts of disk I/O are required.  There may also be some optmizations that can be done for your current RAID array to help it to perform better, but that is beyond the scope of these groups.

    2. Reduce the disk I/O the software is needing by adjusting settings

    Making the configuration changes reccomended will help webmail to preform better in the current situation without having to make complex changes to the disks and hardware.  The entire goal of the reccomended settings is to reduce the disk I/O webmail needs.  Hiding unsubscribed folders is a huge part of this.  


    3. Optmize the software so that it doesn't read/write data so much

    Make sure you are running the latest version of MDaemon as we have been making improvements in the software to reduce the disk I/O that it needs.  The software will still require a lot of disk I/O, there is no way around that, but we've made a number of improvements in recent versions that should help to reduce the disk reads and writes it requires.  This should help webmail to preform better in situations where disks are being pushed to their limits.  


  • Hello, 

    I wanted to give you some feedback following our various exchanges and the actions I've taken :
     - Creation of new SDD storage configured in RAID 10
     - Moved MDaemon to this new storage
     - Purge of rights granted to shared mailboxes
     - Archiving old mails

    From now on, my users no longer experience any slowdowns when using webmail.

    Thanks @Arron for your help and time!


  • This was useful.

    [Default:UserOverrides] SkipInitialMailCheck=Yes HideUnsubscribedFolders=Yes AlwaysCollapseFolders=Yes ListRefreshTime=3

    Thank you, @Arron, and you're right. The latest version of MDaemon is much better, maybe introduce app level i/o caching...


  • Great, thank you both for following up.  MDaemon 24.0.0, which is currently in beta, has additional disk i/o improvements, including caching of settings.


  • Yes, I've seen the changelog, it looks promising, can't wait to try it out!


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