Lew Wolfgang wrote: > I've been using wu-imap since the early '90s and have been > told numerous times about how bad it is. Say what you will > about the mbox format, but its big advantage is the files > are all ascii. This means they can be grepped and fiddled > with outside of the imap system. I once considered one of
No difference to maildir format in that regard. All mails have to survive the transfer across various servers, so basically all mails are transfered as text. Even attachments are converted to ascii text for that reason. This does not mean that they are easily accessable with grep since they are often mime encoded. Just think about all the languages that are not compatible with ascii. > the other systems that uses maildir format, but chickened out > because I didn't want all of our 50 or so accounts being > stored in a database format. This smelled too much like MS > Exchange for me. Uhm, IIRC, Exchange is using one file for each mailbox. Domino is doing the same. In other words, much like mbox. (^-^) If we are talking about Cyrus this is at least partially true, though the mails are still stored as simple files in folders. A real database appliance would be something like dbmail where even the mails themselves are stored in in a mysql database. > I also don't recall ever loosing mail due to wu-imap, but > am willing to hear reasons to change. Has anyone ever had There are some good reasons for maildir: - performance: If you have a LOT of mails in a mbox file it takes a lot of time to scan the mbox for changes. The bigger the mbox files, the more users you've got, the more you will feel this. When you've got powerusers that have nurtured their mailboxes to sizes of 10 GB upwards and you expect your server to respond in a timely fashion you will have to use maildir. (^-^) - deliver security: mbox has a long history of locking problems. This mostly affects bigger installations, where the mbox files are stored on shared network devices and several services might try to access the files. Maildir has no trouble at all if ten mails are delivered in parallel to the same mailbox at the same time. The longer a process has to lock the mbox file for exclusive write access the bigger the change that another process will be blocked and delivery is deferred. - folder structure With maildir you can use a folder structure to sort your mail on your server. - backup: Backup and restore can be done on changed mails only. When you have single mbox files you have backup the entire file if just one mail has been added or deleted. Again, no problem with locking during backup. All these arguments are valid even for middle-sized installations though you might not experience these problems on a small installation. > problems with the maildir format? Do tools outside of the > imap daemon exist for manipulation of the data? Are maildir > systems compatible with "pine"? Yes, we still have pine users. If pine can use pop or imap? Sure. -- Sandy List replies only please! Please address PMs to: news-reply2 (@) japantest (.) homelinux (.) com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
