Although I agree with Bob's conclusion (use mix format), I think that it overstates the issue to say that "mbx format is only marginally better" than mbox".
mbx is a major jump up from mbox, and is handled much better than mbox. mbx scaled very well for the demands of 1996 when it was designed; it's just that we no longer live in that world. mix was designed in 2006 to be as much of a jump from mbx as mbx is a jump from mbox. mix is the ONLY choice for a mailbox >2GB in size; mbx and mbox will not work at all. Although mbx will work with a mailbox of 40,000+ message, it would be painful; and mbox would be unusable. I think that a way of looking at it is that if mbox is a "1", then mbx is a "10" and mix is a "100". On Tue, 16 Mar 2010, Bob Atkins wrote:
The only way to fix the slow I/O problem, especially with large mail boxes is to convert to mix format. mbx format is only marginally better than mbox from a performance standpoint. This is from my personal experience of having mail boxes with 40,000+ messages and >2GB in size. Today's users have no idea how much space their mail is consuming, nor would they care if they did. Our only option as administrators is to implement the fastest and most scalable solution that we can. We converted our systems to mix format about a year ago and oh what a different it made. Much happier users and even happier admins ;-)
-- Mark -- http://panda.com/mrc Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote. _______________________________________________ Imap-uw mailing list [email protected] http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/imap-uw
