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List:       kmail-devel
Subject:    Re: kmail memory usage
From:       Don Sanders <sanders () kde ! org>
Date:       2000-11-27 13:27:45
[Download RAW message or body]

On Monday 27 November 2000 09:24, Martin Konold wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Nov 2000, Rik Hemsley wrote:
> > On Fri, 24 Nov 2000 11:37:48 +0100
> >
> > Martin Konold <konold@kde.org> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I just did a simple search over all folders in kmail and kmail used
> > > 180MB of memory temporarily.
> > >
> > > A query to a db would definetely not need this much memory.
> >
> > Neither would kmail, if it was simply more efficient with memory.
>
> Hmm...., a simple db query would not use much memory. Where is the memory
> wasted during a search? Look like in the above case someone with 64MB of
> memory would believe that kmail died and probably kill it...

The problem will probably be with a single very large message (probably 
cotaining a single verly large attachment). I guess the message would have to 
be about 40MB in size, or maybe a couple of consecutive 20MB messages would 
do it.

It would be nice if KMail/mimelib handled messages of this size better but 
considering that many people have 10/20 MB limits imposed on the size of 
their mailboxes by their isp it's probably better if people don't send huge 
mails via email, better to put such files on an ftp server.

Indeed rather than improving handling of large messages I would rather 
implement support for "leave mail over x kilobytes on the server" and 
"retrieve body of this message" (and "delete messages on server when trash is 
emptied") and by default leave bodies of messages over 5 megabytes on the 
server.

The main problem with the search dialog is that it loads entire messages into 
memory even when it is just searching header fields, which is very slow (and 
can consume a lot of memory). It does this because the KMail index file 
(which is quick to search and contains header field information) truncates 
long header fields when displaying them in the list of headers.

BFN,
Don.
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