From: Wietse Venema (wietseporcupine.org)
Date: Sun Jan 22 2006 - 08:35:53 CST

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Brian McKerr:
> I'm building postfix (2.2.8) for solaris 10 on an athlon64 and wondering
> whether to build 64 bit binaries ?
>
> I found some stuff on the list archives that said it was a slower , but
> there did not appear to be any *real* reason why it was slower.
>
> This solaris box will be replacing a x86_64 redhat box, complete with 64
> bit postfix and mysql etc.
>
> Given all the talk about how much better 64 bit is for databases, what
> should I do there on the solaris box ?
>
>
> Opinions welcome....

With Postfix, you need 64 bits if you plan to manipulate messages
or mailbox files larger than 2GB; it should not make a difference
for performance unless you do lots of content manipulation.

The 2GB is for very lame but also very pragmatic reasons. Postfix
prefers to use signed numbers internally for buffer etc. sizes,
because it is much easier to write robust code than with unsigned
numbers. When a signed number overflows you get a negative object
size, which is easy to catch. When an unsigned number overflows
you get a small number, and that can't raise alarms by itself.

        Wietse

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