Thanks.

Apart from the missing Change User feature which was sorted out in a previous thread (thanks, Thomas), all my users have a common problem with 4.51. The problem is that it is taking twice as long to open as 4.4 did.

I have a central installation on a Windows 2003 server. The network comprises 3 W2k3 servers and 30 XP clients on a CAT5 100Mbit network. There are no latency issues regarding the transport of data. The shortcut to Pegasus Mail takes the form \\servername\share\winpm-32.exe -i username

This behaviour occurs the first time the program is launched, and also on subsequent launches. I've told my users to leave Pegasus Mail open.

Personally, I don't mind waiting a little longer, but I have noticed a considerable delay between launching the program and the program becoming available for use.

Has anyone else seen this?

[quote user="Greenman"]

The shortcut to Pegasus Mail takes the form \\servername\share\winpm-32.exe -i username

Has anyone else seen this?[/quote]

I don't know whether this is going to help, but I thought running a multi-user installation of Pegasus required the -ms switch, i.e. \\servername\share\winpm-32.exe -ms -i username.

Cheers!
Steffan

Hello, Steffan, thanks for your reply.

Whether they use the -ms switch or not, which some do, the behaviour is the same. The -ms switch is only required if you need to access more than one mail account at the same time. The majority of my users only access one account.

Thanks anyway.

Would you like some further information about this? Or, are the developers aware of the situation? There are 30 users all experiencing the same behaviour with Pegasus Mail.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

[quote user="Greenman"]

Would you like some further information about this? Or, are the developers aware of the situation? There are 30 users all experiencing the same behaviour with Pegasus Mail.

[/quote]

Not really  :-) The only potential solution I had in mind involved the -ms switch. That said, I was wondering whether Pegasus Mail can handle as many as 30 users all using the same copy. I hope someone who is more of an expert in this area steps in.

Cheers!
Steffan

[quote user="Greenman"]Is anyone else experiencing this?[/quote]

I'm not - it opens exactly the same across the network as previous versions.

Tell us a little more about your problem - how much slower is it?  What anti-virus is in use and does that make a difference?  Where are the mailboxes and does the size of the new mail folder make a difference?

Thanks to everyone for their replies.

This problem has only started since upgrading from 4.4 to 4.51. We do not experience any problems accessing files from the same server. All our data is on this server (>400GB) and we access Adobe InDesign files, CAD files, all office files. Some of them are GB's in size, while quite a few are >100MB and there is no problem opening these.

The server is a Dell NAS Powervault (dual core, 4GB RAM), running Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition R2. The data drives are in a RAID 5 configuration. CAT5 100Mbit network infrastructure is in place. Access to the network is controlled using Windows Active Directory.

Anti-virus is Sophos Endpoint Security and Control and is set to scan on write only, not to scan archive files and to only scan 'infectable' files. I added the new winpm-32.exe file to the Windows exclusion list on the server and the clients late yesterday afternoon. This morning, I have noticed a difference in the opening times. I have to check 4 mail accounts, one of which is the 'catchall' account for the company. The spam (0 mails, no filtering rules), admin (0 mails, no filtering rules), and catchall account (150 new messages, no filtering rules), opened in 2 seconds, my account (62 new messages, 18 filtering rules), opened in 10 seconds.

The network is healthy - I know because staff are not shy about letting me know if anything out of the ordinary happens. I also have comprehensive monitoring software in place on all the servers and nothing has been flagged that could be responsible for this.

However, one user started Pegasus Mail this morning and it took 1min 3secs to open. Their new mail folder will sometimes contain a max of 10 messages at any one time, but when timed there were no new messages so the folder was empty. There are no filtering rules set up. This user reported though that after closing Pegasus Mail, it took 10 secs to open a second time.

After quizzing people about this, everyone has reported that the response times are better after I added the exe to the exclusion list. However, they all agree that it still takes longer to open than it used to.

So, it looks like adding the new winpm-32.exe to the exclusion list has helped.

Are there any other switches that can be used that are applicable to a networked central installation?

Cheers!

However, one user started Pegasus Mail this morning and it took 1min

3secs to open. Their new mail folder will sometimes contain a max of 10

messages at any one time, but when timed there were no new messages so

the folder was empty. There are no filtering rules set up. This user

reported though that after closing Pegasus Mail, it took 10 secs to

open a second time.

> So, it looks like adding the new winpm-32.exe to the exclusion list has helped.

Personally I would exclude all of the Pegasus Mail and Mercury directories from the scanning and use either Clamwall or Martin Ireland's VirProt to scan the mail on download.  Losing an entire folder with mail because the latest update thinks there is a virus in the file is not something anyone should experience.

> Are there any other switches that can be used that are applicable to a networked central installation?

None that I have ever seen.

Thanks for the info, Thomas.

I already have all of Mercury, the 'catchall' folder and all *.pmm and *.pmi files excluded from On-access scanning. Catchall is also excluded from the weekly scheduled scan on the server. Additionally, Sophos is configured to quarantine only - no deletions. I do a full backup every night of all the server's data to tape, plus I have additional 'secret stashes' on two devices on the network which are updated every night using robocopy. The weekly server scan is scheduled to take place on a sunday, 2 hours after the last backup finishes. Even if something is lost I have the backups, the 'secret stash', the quarantine folder and the catchall folder to go back to. As you know, you can never have too many backups [8-|]

I will have a good look at the configuration of the Windows client tomorrow - the person who uses it will only be in part of the day so I can spend some time on it.

> I already have all of Mercury, the 'catchall' folder and all *.pmm and *.pmi files excluded from On-access scanning. Catchall is also
> excluded from the weekly scheduled scan on the server. Additionally, Sophos is configured to quarantine only - no deletions.

Does not help when the size of the file is larger that the program can handle.  If you have a really large folder the a-v software will delete when it cannot quarantine.

I have just spoken to Sophos Support about this and they have verified that a file would never be deleted.

Their On-access scanner has a file limit of 4GB - files larger than 4GB are not scanned. However, scheduled scans have no file size limit - everything is scanned

Any AV that deletes files, or is unable to handle large files as part of either an on-demand scan or scheduled scan is not much use in my opinion.

After a week's monitoring I have seen varying results. On some machines startup takes more than a minute, while on others it is fast. Unfortunately, the problem is not something that can be replicated because Pegasus Mail's performance seems variable.

For example, if I reboot my PC, my mail account can take from 10 secs to a minute to load. My PC is left on most of the time. When I return to work in the morning and start Pegasus it will take up to a minute before I can use the program. My mail folder is 450MB. However, starting the catchall account is fast on all machines. The catchall mail folder is 3.2GB.

As I said in my earlier post, I have asked staff to leave Pegasus Mail open. For staff who need to access multiple accounts, the -ms switch has proved invaluable in this respect.

I've had a look at PC's with the slowest access times and accessing the network, shares, and running other exe files is instant every time. Nothing is logged in the System/Application Event Logs at the same time that Pegasus is called across the network by all staff when they start work.

Staff will soon get used to this. Still, it is a shame as we have seen a performance decrease since upgrading. Apart from the random slow startup everything is working fine.

Cheers!

> Staff will soon get used to this. Still, it is a shame as we have
> seen a performance decrease since upgrading. Apart from the random
> slow startup everything is working fine.

Have you looked at installing v4.41 and performing the same test?  I expect you will see the same thing with v4.41.

BTW, where does Pegasus Mail lockup in the startup process.

But that's why I started this thread - the previous version was noticeably faster than the upgrade. Seriously, if the difference was small I would not be posting.

The longest pause occurs on the second Starting up banner. The program starts, the splash screen says Starting up. Within a second or two the 'reading folders', 'preparing address books' etc flashes on the screen - usually too fast to read, then Starting up appears again. It is at this point that the longest delay occurs. After this it will display Opening new mail folder for a few seconds and then the program is available.

But that's why I started this thread - the previous version was

noticeably faster than the upgrade. Seriously, if the difference was

small I would not be posting.

The reason I asked was to verify that you tried using v4.41 on the same systems after noticing the slowdown to ensure that this was caused by v4.51.  In my case when I run v4.41 or even v3.12c I still see the same slowdown on startup and any time the shared volume is not used for a period of time.

Ahh - I see.

No, the volume is used constantly all day. I have mine open all the time while I'm at work. The volume is not used between 5 and 8, except for when I use Remote Desktop from home (which is fairly often). I am very reluctant to reinstall the previous version and then upgrade again. However, during this time a full backup to tape occurs between 10pm and 5am and further incremental backups of most of the data occur at different times between 6pm and 5am. So, the volume is never really 'silent' for very long.

This is truly random. I have just been working with a member of staff and asked them to close their email then open it again. I had been present when they initially opened their email this morning and their Pegasus Mail client has been open all day. When they restarted, Pegasus Mail took just as long to open as it had when the machine was first switched on: >1min

We never saw such long loading times previously.