Purpose of this document
========================
This document describes
1 - How to build Postfix with third-party Berkeley DB from
www.sleepycat.com, or how to choose a specific Berkeley DB version
when your system provides multiple implementations.
2 - How to tweak performance.
Building Postfix with Sleepycat Berkeley DB
===========================================
Many commercial UNIXes ship without Berkeley DB support. Examples
are Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, UNIXWARE. In order to build Postfix with
Berkeley DB support you need to download and install the source
code from www.sleepycat.com.
To build Postfix after you installed the Berkeley DB from Sleepycat,
use something like:
% make tidy
% make makefiles CCARGS="-DHAS_DB -I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.3.1/include" \
AUXLIBS="-L/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.3.1/lib -ldb"
% make
The exact pathnames depend on the DB version that you installed.
For example, Berkeley DB version 2 installs in /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.
Warning: the file format produced by Berkeley DB version 1 is not
compatible with that of versions 2 and 3 (versions 2 and 3 have
the same format). If you switch between DB versions, then you may
have to rebuild all your Postfix DB files.
Warning: if you use Berkeley DB version 2 or later, do not enable
DB 1.85 compatibility mode. Doing so would break fcntl file locking.
Warning: if you use PERL to manipulate Postfix .db files, then you
need to use the same Berkeley DB version in PERL as in Postfix.
Building Postfix on BSD systems with a specific Berkeley DB version
===================================================================
Some BSD systems ship with multiple Berkeley DB implementations.
Normally, Postfix builds with the default DB version that ships
with the system.
To build Postfix on BSD systems with a specific DB version, use a
variant of the following commands:
% make tidy
% make makefiles CCARGS=-I/usr/include/db2 AUXLIBS=-ldb2
% make
Warning: the file format produced by Berkeley DB version 1 is not
compatible with that of versions 2 and 3 (versions 2 and 3 have
the same format). If you switch between DB versions, then you may
have to rebuild all your Postfix DB files.
Warning: if you use Berkeley DB version 2 or later, do not enable
DB 1.85 compatibility mode. Doing so would break fcntl file locking.
Warning: if you use PERL to manipulate Postfix .db files, then you
need to use the same Berkeley DB version in PERL as in Postfix.
Building Postfix on Linux with a specific Berkeley DB version
=============================================================
Some Linux systems ship with multiple Berkeley DB implementations.
Normally, Postfix builds with the default DB version that ships
with the system.
On Linux, you need to edit the makedefs script in order to specify
a non-default DB library.
The reason is that the location of the default db.h include file
changes randomly between vendors and between versions, so that
Postfix has to choose the file for you.
Warning: the file format produced by Berkeley DB version 1 is not
compatible with that of versions 2 and 3 (versions 2 and 3 have
the same format). If you switch between DB versions, then you may
have to rebuild all your Postfix DB files.
Warning: if you use Berkeley DB version 2 or later, do not enable
DB 1.85 compatibility mode. Doing so would break fcntl file locking.
Warning: if you use PERL to manipulate Postfix .db files, then you
need to use the same Berkeley DB version in PERL as in Postfix.
Tweaking performance
====================
Postfix provides two configuration parameters that control how much
buffering memory Berkeley DB will use.
- berkeley_db_create_buffer_size (default: 16 MBytes per table).
This setting is used by the postalias and postmap commands. For
"hash" files, create performance degrades rapidly unless the memory
pool is O(file size). For "btree" files, create peformance is good
with sorted input even for small memory pools, but with random
input degrades rapidly unless the memory pool is O(file size).
- berkeley_db_read_buffer_size (default: 128 kBytes per table).
This setting is used by all other Postfix programs. The buffer size
is adequate for reading. If the cache is smaller than the table,
random read performance is hardly cache size dependent, except with
btree tables, where the cache size must be large enough to contain
the entire path from the root node. Empirical evidence shows that
64 kBytes may be sufficient. We double the size to play safe, and
to anticipate changes in implementation and bloat.