................Tue 9.Apr'13 at 6:58:57 -0600 Nicolas Bock................
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> On 04/09/13 02:37, James Griffin wrote:
> > ................Mon 8.Apr'13 at 8:55:16 -0600 Nicolas
> > Bock................
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> that makes a lot of sense. I just double checked with TB and yes,
> >> it is basically the same speed. Synchronizing the headers takes
> >> forever :)
> >>
> >> I will have to start labelling emails much more aggressively,
> >> thanks for the tip!
> >>
> >> nick
> >>
> >>
> >> On Sat, Apr 06, 2013 at 11:31:53AM +0200, Jonny Oschätzky wrote:
> >>> Hi Nick,
> >>>
> >>>> The local read test really seems to indicate that it's not
> >>>> the database backend that is controlling performance when
> >>>> switching folders here. It is presumable network
> >>>> communication with Google's imap servers. And that presumably
> >>>> means that I can't do much about it, or can I?
> >>>
> >>> I can confirm this.
> >>>
> >>> If you have a big mailbox (my "All Mail" contains ~150,000
> >>> messages), then the Google IMAP server is very slow. I've
> >>> checked this with Thunderbird and the result is mostly the
> >>> same. TB opens the box very fast and then it takes a long time
> >>> to update the header cache.
> >>>
> >>> The IMAP protocol itself causes this, because it needs to
> >>> synchronize the folder. The bigger a folder is the longer this
> >>> process takes.
> >>>
> >>> I solved this problem for me with offlineimap and archivemail.
> >>> I don't need the All Mail folder since I use labels for all my
> >>> stuff and mailing lists. So it results in different Maildirs on
> >>> my PC which are synchronized by offlineimap in the background.
> >>> Older mail is archived by archivemail in gzipped mboxes. That
> >>> works great. :)
> >>>
> >>> Jonny
> >>>
> >
> > Purely just out of curiosity, why would you need to keep such a
> > high number of email? Is this something quite common (at risk of
> > sounding a bit stupid)? I just can't imagine ever keeping that much
> > email in my account.
> >
>
> That's a good question. The thing is that since Google's webinterface
> makes searching for messages and opening folders so painless it never
> occurred to me that that's a large number. Only after I started
> becoming a little bit more paranoid somewhat recently and attempted to
> back up my emails and set up gpg, did I start to understand that there
> are limitations with this amount of data.
>
> So I take it that you simply delete old emails? Or do you have some
> archiving protocol?
>
> nick
Well, yes I do have an archiving system but really i'm only interested
in keeping my University mail and a few interesting mails from mailing
lists that I know i will want to refer back to but I ensure the mail I
want to keep is flagged and archived monthly (usually) and so keeps my
current mailbox usage free from large amounts of it. I use mutt macros
and other external tools to archive mailboxes on disk etc. like i'm sure
most people do.
I recall someone mentioned they have the best part of 200,000 emails.
For me, I can't imagine why I would want to keep a large number like
that.
I am sure people have perfectly valid reasons for keeping such large
amount, it was just out of curiosity.
Jamie
--
James Griffin: jmz at kontrol.kode5.net
jmzgriffin at gmail.com
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