Dear all,
I guess this question is a classic one but I am afraid I have not found
a satisfying answer neither in the IMAP FAQ nor in the UW-IMAPD
package documentation.
What I would like to know is an effective way of monitoring a large
number of folders under an IMAP tree without having to keep a TCP
connection for each folder (as the commndmt.txt file suggests).
Here is an scheme of my proposed solution:
Mail deliveries from MTA's (e.g. sendmail) or MDA's (e.g.
procmail) should be done either by an IMAP APPEND command or via a
deamon direct delivery (such as tmail or dmail).
Like this, all events, whether coming from a delivery or not, would be
known by the daemon in realtime.
The extension would make the IMAP server leave a message or send
specific unsolicited data to client connections that have selected
well-known"notification folder" and set themselves up in IDLE state.
Therefore mail clients would need to do only 2 TCP connections. One to
select the notifying folder permanently in IDLE mode (timeouts apart of
course) and the other to go and check each modified folder.
This is the grosso-modo the solution. I guess some synchronisation
aspects should be work further.
I imagine that such an idea must have had come up before. If it is
the case, what were the result of previous discussions? Is there ideally
an IETF draft foreseen?.
Regards,
Miguel Telleria
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Miguel TELLERIA DE ESTEBAN Personal Homepage:
Email: Miguel at mtelleria.com http://www.mtelleria.com
Miembro de http://www.linuca.org Tel home: +32 2 280 1614
Membre de http://www.bxlug.be GSM: +32 497 038804
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