<Mode = "clueless OE quoting">
From: "Binand Raj S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Monday 15 July 2002 10:39 pm, Sudhakar Chandra wrote:
> 1. Take the machine into single user mode.
> 2. Configure your MDA to deliver into user's Maildir repository.
> 3. Mass convert existing mbox to Maildir using available scripts.
> 4. Go into multi user mode.

"Thaths, why do you recommend taking the system down to single user
mode? Isn't stopping the mail subsystem enough?"

I prefer taking the system to single user mode to prevent users from logging
in (via ssh/telnet) and mucking about with their mail locally.  If all the
mail users are virtusers, then all you need to do is stop pop/imap and
smtpd.

> It totally depends on which overhead - opening one mbox file and parsing
it
> or opening multiple Maildir files - is slower.  IMO, both are slow when
> dealing with especially huge folders.  You might consider looking into

"Is it? Consider a mailbox with 10,000 mails. With mbox, when the client
does a STAT command, the POP server needs to open mbox, parse
it, and then send the response. Whereas with maildirs, the server
just needs to run stat() in a loop. Or if a single mail is requested, its
serial no (in the STAT command) is mapped to the filename in Maildir/new,
so a comparatively smaller file needs to be opened and sent across the
network.

Maybe CRLF translation requirement would make it necessary to open all files
in a Maildir to be opened before their sizes can be determined."

I still contend that it depends.  The question is which process is faster:
opening one file and parsing it or opening multiple files and doing minimal
parsing.  I say both processes are slow.

"I'd like to know what your reasons are in saying both would be equally (?)
slow when dealing with large mailboxes."

I didn't say "equally" slow.  I meant "relatively" slow.  And I use
'depends' because for users with a small amount of mails, say 42, in thier
mailbox mbox is faster.  For users with a larger number of mails, say 1000,
in their mailbox Maildir is faster.

Of course all of this is pure theorizing on my part.  I have no factual
numbers to back up my claim.

> Cyrus IMAP as well.  It has a non-standard format of storing mail that is
> sort of like Maildir.  But the problem there would be user's can only read
> mail through the IMAP (i.e you cannot use mutt locally on the machine to
> read off /var/spool/mail or ~/Mail).

"The problem with Cyrus would be one of migration - both to and from. Does
it ship with tools that migrate mbox/Maildir to its database format? Or vice
versa?"

The non-standard format of Cyrus is what prevents me from using it.  I
personally run Courier.

Thaths



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