On Mon, 5 Dec 2005, Andrew Daviel wrote:
I am running UW imapd and dmail with MBX mailbox format. I noticed using debugfs "stat <file>" that the mail file can get quite badly fragmented over time.
Since most access to a mbx-format mailbox is random access, I'm not convinced that fragmentation is a major issue. Certainly, fragmentation is less of a problem overall on modern filesystems than it is on FAT filesystems under DOS.
I don't think that there's any good way to prevent fragmentation from happening given the way that mbx files work. I agree that copying to another file and moving it back is a good way to defragment the file.
I'd like to see some more definite statistics before I believe that fragmentation is much to worry about. I'm of the opinion that defragmentation wastes more resources than fragmentation does, but I may be wrong.
-- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. _______________________________________________ Imap-uw mailing list [email protected] https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/imap-uw
