On Mon, 24 May 2004, Sasa Stupar wrote: > Davide, > I have been looking arround about mail formats and found out interesting > info on http://www.washington.edu/imap/documentation/formats.txt.html . > > Just a part of it what is very interesting: > -------------- > There's a general reason why file/message formats are a bad idea. > Just about every filesystem in existance serializes file creation and > deletions because these manipulate the free space map. This turns out > to be an enormous problem when you start creating/deleting more than a > few messages per second; you spend all your time thrashing in the > filesystem. > > It is also extremely slow to do a text search through a > file/message format mailbox. All of those open()s and close()s really > add up to major filesystem thrashing. > -------------
They serialize per directory entry eventually, that's why XMail uses a split spool. About the mailbox, what the heck does it matter for a single mailbox? At which rate a *single* mailbox can receive messages? Shooting awesomely high, 1 per second, with the dentry lock held for maybe 3 milliseconds. OTOH mbox is crap, since it is a single huge file with no index structure, that needs complete rewriting each time you remove messages. - Davide - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe xmail" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For general help: send the line "help" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
