> The Point: I'm not noticing a considerable speed increase ... moreover,
How about relative load on the server?
There's a lot of factors to consider in this regard. Possibly the code
that handled v7 mailboxes scans the whole mailbox at startup and retains
pointers directly into an open file. A Maildir scanner most likely retains
the filenames which must be opened each time.
> I'm not noticing there being no corrolation between the number of
> messages in a folder and the time it takes to access a new message (this
> ought to be constant, right ... if you have 50 message or 2500 messages
> in that folder shouldn't matter, right?) ...
>
> What's going on here that I'm missing and was I crazy to transfer my
> mail systems from mbox to maildir??
What you need to do is measure the complete picture. System load, response times,
network traffic, maintenance (such as purging aged messages) etc. Also if the
profile of the mail changes, that can affect a lot of things too, for example,
what if the mailbox has a small number of very large messages, does your performance
profile change? Typically Maildir gains as the average message size grows.
But, it's very much an "it depends" situation. I'd be very surprised if you've
lost by changing over, so don't sweat it too much.
Regards.
