Re: [gentoo-server] creating a black hole for load testing mail servers

[kashani]

Kurt Lieber wrote:
> At work, we are load testing a number of different mail servers.  I need to
> send large amounts of mail through the boxes as part of this.  To get rid
> of the mail, I'd like to have a Gentoo box running exim or another MTA on
> the end of the chain that does two very simple things:
>
> * Accepts any and all mail that is sent to it, regardless of domain,
>   recipient, etc.
> * Delivers all mail to /dev/null
>
> This needs to happen as fast as possible.  Ideally, I'd like to prevent the
> mail from ever touching the disk for speed reasons, but if that's not
> possible through the MTA, I can accomplish the same thing by putting the
> spool on a RAM disk.
>
> Is this easy enough to set up?  Any sample configuration files I can crib
> from?
>
> Thanks.
>
> --kurt
>
> P.S. if there's another way of accomplishing the same thing, please let me
> know.  It is important, however, that the black hole actually have an SMTP
> conversation with the sending server.  I can't just route all traffic to
> port 25 to /dev/null.

This might be what you're looking for.
http://www.wiredfool.com/2002/06/11/howToBlackholeEmailServer

You might need to play with the config on a recent version of Postfix to 
get it to work as described. From the date it's possible he was using 
Postfix 1.1 vs the current 2.1 version.

However, unless you have a very specific application raw throughput is 
rarely going to tell you much about how well your mail server will 
perform. Queue sizes, bounce handling, slow connections, content 
filtering, number of connections, quality of the recieving or sending 
mail server, ability to reuse a connection, etc are usually going to 
have a greater impact on real world performance.

I would however be curious about any numbers/comparisions you come up 
with in your testing.

kashani
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