[GTALUG] mbox/Maildir [was: Re: Interesting essay on filesystem consistency]

D. Hugh Redelmeier hugh at mimosa.com
Wed Dec 23 20:26:02 UTC 2015


| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca>
| 
| On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 12:17:41PM -0500, Kevin Cozens wrote:
| > On 12/14/2015 01:36 PM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
| > >Well deleting a message requires deleting a file, not rewriting the
| > >entire mbox after that message, so Maildir is a good idea.
| > 
| > My first exposure to Maildir was via Qmail. I thought it was a better way to
| > handle lots of email than sticking everything in a single file that needs to
| > keep updated as you read and delete messages. Makes you wonder why someone
| > thought it was a good idea to just drop all email in to a single file in the
| > first place.
| 
| A lot less inodes, and older filesystems didn't like large directories.

I've been using mbox format for almost 40 years.  It seems to work
fairly well for me.

- performance is OK, even for horribly large mbox files

- (touch wood) I don't remember anything lost due to "too many eggs in
  one basket"

- "external fragmentation" would seem to be a problem with Maildir:
  file overhead (including rounding up to a full last block) is
  probably a significant part of the cost of a mail file.

I'm setting up a new mailserver right now and I'm wondering if I
should switch.  I'm building a CentOS 7 system to replace a CentOS 5
one.  Learning about Postfix.  (I once more or less understood sendmail.)

I don't use IMAP (yet?).  Maybe IMAP vs mbox would be a problem.  I
may set up Dovecot -- does that demand Maildir?


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