[tlug] Tweaking my server for better memory handling (mail failure, and innodb settings)

[Dave M G <martin@example.com>]

TLUG,

This question is about MySQL and innodb, but I'll first describe how it 
came up, even though it seems like two separate issues.

I was having some trouble recently on my server with memory allocation 
being used up, which caused the mail services to fail.

After a little analyzing, and some advice from the support staff, it 
seemed likely that one of the causes was having a few of my domain names 
email servers set to have catch-all email addresses accepting all 
un-routed email. This meant that every spammer testing out random email 
addresses, like "info" and "admin" and "web" and whatever else, was 
getting through, and eating up processing time.

So, I've set my catch-all email settings to:
:fail: no such address here

I also enabled Spam Assassin for all accounts.

It was while talking about this mail issue with my support guys at my 
web hosting service that they mentioned the following:

> Additionally, If you are not using innodb tables, then I would highly
> suggest adding the skip-innodb line to your configuration, as the innodb
> module a very large amount of memory (I have seen mysql drop from
> 100-120mb of memory usage to 30-40mb.). If you do need to have innodb
> tables, then there are settings that you can tweak to make it more
> memory efficient.
I don't *think* I'm using innodb, but that's only based on the 
assumption that since I haven't explicitly set it up myself that maybe 
it isn't being used. If I understand my situation correctly from reading 
on the web, I'm using MyISAM only, but I'm not 100% confident in that.

Innodb might be part of some default value that I am not aware of.

So my question is, do you guys agree with the advice from my web hosting 
support?

--
Dave M G
Community Moderator