We currently manage a qmail setup with close to 1 million virtual accounts
handling 3+ million incomming messages daily. Everything if fully redudant
(minimum of 3 servers for everything) having several SMTP, POP, IMAP, SQL,
LDAP and NFS servers all hooked up via fiber connections. This setup works
great and handles the load great but several of our customers have lately
been complaining about the speed of mailbox access. We have narrowed the
problem down to the amount of time needed to extract the headers from
thousands of messages stored within a single folder. One customer has 2gigs
of mail and it is taking more then 10 minutes to generate data for the
headers request. (telling them to delete some is _NOT_ a valid responce)

This message was written to see if there is currently a project underway (or
to compile a listing of ideas for such a beast) to integrate an envelope
(meaning user_delivered_to, folder, to, cc, from, subject, size, delivery
date, attachments flag [yes/no], normal maildir flags) extraction
"subservice" into qmail. This would also need to tie into both POP and IMAP
to maintain it. It should update a SQL database with the envelope
information for each and every message delivered localy. If POP or IMAP does
anything, this should also be reflected in the SQL database. If they need to
do sorts or listings, they should do so via the database (unless it is
eaiser and faster to do it by its self).

The reason I would like to see this information extracted is primarly do to
a propritary webmail infastructure being developed. It is much faster for us
to issue SQL commands to generate listings then IMAP or POP commnads. I
relize that this will make a mess when it comes to sync'ing everything but I
am unable to think of a better way to approach this.

I would like to hear what you think reguarding this matter. Do you have a
different approach: tell me. Do you know of a way of doing this: tell me. I
really do want to hear from you.

Mike

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