mailutil and Pine do a single atomic append to the destination. Both
copies and appends are atomic and go into one data file; otherwise
reversion on error becomes unfeasible.
Thus, you are correct; a single mass copy or append such as done by a
mailutil conversion or a large Pine save will exceed the 1MB limit.
Since this is generally not done with active messages, this is usually not
a problem.
The problem with backup isn't with large files; it's with large files that
change. Mix data files only change due to append or expunge; unlike mbx
they do not change due to flag changes. Append doesn't happen to an
oversize mix data file, so only expunge will ever alter it.
All flags are in the status file, which is much smaller than the data
file. The status file will be actively backed up.
"Pre-1995" mail generally isn't going to be expunged. If it was, it
probably would have been expunged sometime in the past 11 years... ;-)
So I don't believe that the atomic append behavior is a problem.
-- Mark --
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
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