Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 10:55:33AM -0400, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote: > On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 04:50:01PM +0200, Michelle Konzack wrote: > > In summary: If you have big mailboxes, like mailinglists, > > you will go better with Maildir or IMAP > > Mail store format and the remote access method are orthogonal, except in > the case of Cyrus. UW lets you store IMAP accessible mail in mbox, And, for the record, Cyrus uses an MH-like store (looks a lot like Maildir), with indexes for the most needed headers. The indexes work so well, that a folder that with maildir would take mutt a minute to open (100k+ messages, xfs), takes about 5s in Cyrus with a proper IMAP client (Mulbelry. Anyone knows of a DFSG MUA that is actually a real IMAP client and not some lame-ass kludge on top of a filesystem/pop3 client like mutt or Thunderbird?) Of course, you better have that Cyrus spool on a serious filesystem, like XFS or 2.6.11 ext3 with btrees and htrees enabled, or else the server will dislike heavily users that attempt to place too many messages in a folder... Also, for the record, IMHO UW IMAPd is a horrid joke of a imap daemon that should have already died an horrible death two years ago, or at the very least it should come with a surgeon's general warning that says "Do not use this crap if your folders have typically more than 100 messages". -- Henrique M. Holschuh (still without his witty sig :( ) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 11:30:08AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: > > Only if you never, ever intend to touch the database with any normal file > tools. And if that is the case one is better off with a real database instead > of a trumped up one based off the concept of "the filesystem is a database". Actually, the filesystem *is* a data base. What it isn't is a data base manager. The nice thing about reiserfs is that, as far as I know, it was actually designed by someone who understands data bases. -- hendrik -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
Am 2005-06-06 13:47:25, schrieb Ron Johnson: > On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 11:30 -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: > > Only if you never, ever intend to touch the database with any normal > > file > > tools. And if that is the case one is better off with a real database > > instead > > of a trumped up one based off the concept of "the filesystem is a database". > > ? > > I "grep -r" my ~/Maildir on a regular basis. Works like a charm. You are not alone. Greetings Michelle -- Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ Michelle Konzack Apt. 917 ICQ #328449886 50, rue de Soultz MSM LinuxMichi 0033/3/8845235667100 Strasbourg/France IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com) signature.pgp Description: Digital signature
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 11:30 -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: > Michelle Konzack wrote: > > OK, I have curently around 220.000 MAILDIR-Messages of the LKM in > > my Folder on a FileServer which is a Sempron 2200 with 256 MByte. > > Open the Folder with mutt takes around 57 seconds via NFS/100MBit > > Ye, and if we were paying attention we'd see that I was talking about > doing file operations like... ls, grep, etc. > > > In summary: If you have big mailboxes, like mailinglists, > > you will go better with Maildir or IMAP > > Only if you never, ever intend to touch the database with any normal file > tools. And if that is the case one is better off with a real database instead > of a trumped up one based off the concept of "the filesystem is a database". ? I "grep -r" my ~/Maildir on a regular basis. Works like a charm. -- - Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson, LA USA PGP Key ID 8834C06B I prefer encrypted mail. "Liberals are people who can read '1984' and 'Animal Farm' and still think it doesn't mean them." Anonymous Coward signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
Michelle Konzack wrote: > OK, I have curently around 220.000 MAILDIR-Messages of the LKM in > my Folder on a FileServer which is a Sempron 2200 with 256 MByte. > Open the Folder with mutt takes around 57 seconds via NFS/100MBit Ye, and if we were paying attention we'd see that I was talking about doing file operations like... ls, grep, etc. > In summary: If you have big mailboxes, like mailinglists, > you will go better with Maildir or IMAP Only if you never, ever intend to touch the database with any normal file tools. And if that is the case one is better off with a real database instead of a trumped up one based off the concept of "the filesystem is a database". > ??? - Mutt uses hashes to find the right one > and do not need to rescan the whole Maildir. File operations. Where did I say mutt. Keep up here. We're talking about when things cannot be done through the normal means, IE, the mail client. Like, say, when accessing the mail over a slow link (DSL, not 100Mbit) and the client timing out before the server is done sending everything. > Opneing a file of 500 MByte as you told before > and the edit by hand ? - Are you dreaming ? No. Been doing it for years for emergency modification of customer data when things go to crap. > Hmmm, I am using Maildir sind my last Windoze is gone, which mean, > since 04/1999 and never had problems with Maildir or lost a message. > You mus do something wrong! Never said maildir lost a message. I did point out that in the past 10+ years of direct experience with mbox I have never lost a message, either. Meanwhile in the past several years of maildir I *have* experienced severe problems in dealing with customer problems based on the simple fact that basic file operations, ls, grep foo *, etc, take several minutes to complete or don't work at all. > I do not like to think on daily Incremental-Backups of around > 50 GByte Mailboxes, because you need to backup ALL changed. > On my Maildirsystem I have only 20 MByte per day. Never heard of diff, eh? Pity. -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your PGP Key: 8B6E99C5 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+- signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 04:50:01PM +0200, Michelle Konzack wrote: > > In summary: If you have big mailboxes, like mailinglists, > you will go better with Maildir or IMAP > Mail store format and the remote access method are orthogonal, except in the case of Cyrus. UW lets you store IMAP accessible mail in mbox, while there other servers that do Maildir and even more exotic formats. All of those are also locally accessible by any MUA. -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr pgpYZTd0PMcje.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: On IMAP servers (was: Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?)
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 02:55:55AM -0500, Steve Block wrote: > On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 02:20:40AM -0400, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote: > >Short summary of popular IMAP servers: > >server why you would use it > >-- > >UW IMAP You are a masochist > >Cyrus IMAP You need *serious* scalability (e.g., 100,000 users with > > accounts on 8 clustered servers using Cyrus Murder) > > You want to virtual host or setup mail accounts without > > requiring a corresponding shell account > >Courier IMAPYou want low maint/like Maildir > >Dovecot New kid on the block; you like living on the edge > > I highly and heartily recommend cyrus. 20,000 messages in a folder? > 30,000? More (debian-user archive, anyone)? Want the server to handle > sorting your mail for you? Thanks to Debian it's pretty easy to set up, > and getting postfix to talk to it is cake. > Funny that you mention that. While those are all nice things, if you are not a full-time admin, maintaing a Cyrus installation for more than a couple of users gets to be a real pain. That said, if you are an ISP with a bunch of admins running around, the scalability is especially nice. I have seen posting to newsgroups and such on the net where people mention Murder clusters serving in excess of 250,000 users. I originally picked it for my server because it was an old machine and I was worried about corruption or hardware failure and I didn't want a large mbox file getting trashed. To me, the really nicest feature of Cyrus is the duplicate delivery elimination. Until I switched to Courier last month, I had forgotten that people actually CC list mail. Cyrus does it by keeping a database of (I think) hashes of messages received within a certain time frame. Dupes are discarded. This is done primarily to stop floods from messages that are caught in loops with MTAs or whatever, but it also works with getting the same message muiltiple times on multiple mailing lists/CCs. > I also never liked both local and IMAP access to the same mail store. > It just seems dangerous to me. The fact that cyrus uses it's own mail > store that is not directly accessible is to me a feature. It also lets > users make filtering rules without understanding a rule writing language > thanks to sieve and the avelsieve plugin for squirrelmail. > To a degree yes. I found the mailfilter rules I started using with Courier to be more flexible. However, I wouldn't expect a newbie to deal well with it. > It may seem excessive if you're the only user, but it works so well that > if you're going to run your own IMAP server anyways it may as well be > cyrus. > Thankfully, the newer versions in Sarge are pretty good. I know that the version of Cyrus with Woody was absolutely attrociously old and finding anyone to help with problems with it or even docs about it was nigh impossible. > I did use Dovecot briefly to access a massive email archive from several > years ago. It was in maildir format and I wanted to move the entire > contents to my cyrus store. Worked fine then, and if you like maildir it > sure was easier to deal with than Courier (we didn't get along). > Though, if you are interested in moving from Cyrus to something that uses Maildir, I maintain the Debian package of cyrus2courier (which also handles Dovecot and other Maildirs). In fact, finding that little program was what made me finally take the plunge (and procrastination on a project that was due the next day at school, but I digress). -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr pgpTxQO37d9gp.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
Am 2005-06-05 16:06:42, schrieb Steve Lamb: > It is not a silly response, it is factual. 500Mb of mail at an average of > 5Kb per message is 100,000 messages. 100,000 files in a single directory is OK, I have curently around 220.000 MAILDIR-Messages of the LKM in my Folder on a FileServer which is a Sempron 2200 with 256 MByte. Open the Folder with mutt takes around 57 seconds via NFS/100MBit The same as Mailbox will kill the machine because oben a Mailbox of this dimension require realy much memory and the whole Network connection is blocked. It need around 8 Minutes to open and crashed because there is a limit of 2 GByte on i386 Systems. Please note, that my LKM mailfolder has 220.000 Messages with around 3200 MByte, which can only be handled bei a real 64Bit Operating system like amd64 or IA64 (and oterh 64Bit CPU's). Open the same folder with from 'mutt' with courier-imap requires around 23 Seconds. Why is this ? You have forgotten ONE BIG THING !!! A MUA which open a Mailbox file, require to read the whole file to find the BEGIN of the HEADER and its END and then the END of the BODY. So you wats all your CPU resources looking for data. In Maildir, the BEGIN of the HEADER is the BEGIN of the FILE and the MUA skip the rest of teh Messages if it find the END of the HEADER. Via IMAP, the MUA sends a request to the IMAP-Server which HEADER it like and the IMAP-Server send only the required HEADERs to the MUA. Because the IMAP-Server does not need to annalyse the HEADERs it filter only the REQUESTED ones and terminate. In summary: If you have big mailboxes, like mailinglists, you will go better with Maildir or IMAP > not "more efficient for individual deletes" when you're a mail administrator > trying to reduce the mail load so the customer's machine won't time out while > connecting to the server to retrieve mail. You can't even do simple file > operations to know which files to delete without the machine taking several > minutes. Any file globbing is out of the question since it will more than ??? - Mutt uses hashes to find the right one and do not need to rescan the whole Maildir. If this is not true, my FileServer should not work with its Sempron 2200+ and 256 MByte of memory. > likely exceed the maximum number of arguments and filename completion again > causes excessive pauses. In short every operation for manipulation the > messages is just shot to hell. ??? > A comparable mbox, on the other hand, you can at least do all of the above > without having a book handy. The only operation which takes quite a while > would be opening up the file in a text editor. Of course that operation is Opneing a file of 500 MByte as you told before and the edit by hand ? - Are you dreaming ? > faster than anything requiring traversing the directory and once open > operations are far faster. > > Maildir is good on paper. In practice and in contact with customers > maildir falls flat on its face. In the years of admining mbox at an ISP with > 7,000 customers I never had corruption issues and mail problems like the above > were resolved in a few minutes. My last job at a smaller hosting company with Hmmm, I am using Maildir sind my last Windoze is gone, which mean, since 04/1999 and never had problems with Maildir or lost a message. You mus do something wrong! > only hundreds of customers I routinely had to fix maildir's problems and spend > an ungodly amount of time (30-40m) per problem because I had to work around > not being able to file glob, do a simple directory listing, etc. I don't > consider that "silly" in the lest and given the inclination of us unix geeks > to keep thousands of messages lying around for years on end it is certainly a > concern that should be passed on to any potential person thinking of maildir. Quest: Do you backup your System ? - How often ? I do only one time per week Full-Backup and then 6 Incremental-Backups. I do not like to think on daily Incremental-Backups of around 50 GByte Mailboxes, because you need to backup ALL changed. On my Maildirsystem I have only 20 MByte per day. Greetings Michelle -- Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ Michelle Konzack Apt. 917 ICQ #328449886 50, rue de Soultz MSM LinuxMichi 0033/3/8845235667100 Strasbourg/France IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com) signature.pgp Description: Digital signature
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 03:34:02AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: > With that said let's apply it to the conversation at hand. Are you > implying that for the sake of sanity the individual they should place > limitations on the email they manage on their own system. While my 100k > example was an extreme case (but a *real* case) even the cases where it was a > mere 15-20k messages (several a month) took a while to work through. That's > not that much when you get down to it. I've got one folder here that is > sitting at 3k and growing, another at 5k but fairly static though the contents > shift. I'm also not into archiving tons of mail so I'd classify my usage as > moderate, not heavy. > Wow. I have ~75 messages across all my mailboxes and i consider that too much. So much for my 133t 5ki1z :-) -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr pgpxUc39NJ2rW.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
Todd A. Jacobs wrote: > Okay, at the risk of starting a flame war, it's still silly. Allowing > users to have 100,000 messages in a single directory is insane, and is > purely the fault of the administrator for not forcing users to download, > sort, archive, or otherwise deal with their mail in a sensible way. Use > inode quotas, for goodness sakes. That falls under the realm of customer interface. They prided themselves on letting the customers do what was needed to get the job done even if the customers didn't know what the hell it was they needed. While I don't generally agree with the position I do understand it since their business was paid for by said customers. ;) With that said let's apply it to the conversation at hand. Are you implying that for the sake of sanity the individual they should place limitations on the email they manage on their own system. While my 100k example was an extreme case (but a *real* case) even the cases where it was a mere 15-20k messages (several a month) took a while to work through. That's not that much when you get down to it. I've got one folder here that is sitting at 3k and growing, another at 5k but fairly static though the contents shift. I'm also not into archiving tons of mail so I'd classify my usage as moderate, not heavy. > Moving 100,000 emails into a single file just shuffles the problem > around. Agreed. But the problems you listed are easier to manage on a day by day basis, even when managing cpu/disk consumption, than having to bang your head against maildir with standard tools. > All that is somewhat irrelevent, though, in that maildir was not > designed to provide better performance (although it can, in some cases), > but to provide guarantees that all messages are safely written to disk. Never said it did. I just wanted to air out the common problem I had to deal with on a near daily basis because I know it is a point of consideration for many members of this list. I know that people here archive all messages that pass through lists their on. Years of messages on disk. > Personally, I use both, for different reasons and in places where they > make sense. Always use the right tool for the job at hand; zealotry is > inefficient. Yes, it is. Which is why I wanted to point out the problems associated with it so the individual(s) who read the discussion can make an informed choice. I certainly wouldn't begrudge anyone for using maildir (or courier, or cyrus, or whatever) even though I personally would not use it. Zealotry goes both ways. Ignoring that there are problems doesn't make 'em go away. :P -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your PGP Key: 8B6E99C5 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+- signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: On IMAP servers (was: Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?)
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 02:20:40AM -0400, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote: Short summary of popular IMAP servers: server why you would use it -- UW IMAP You are a masochist Cyrus IMAP You need *serious* scalability (e.g., 100,000 users with accounts on 8 clustered servers using Cyrus Murder) You want to virtual host or setup mail accounts without requiring a corresponding shell account Courier IMAPYou want low maint/like Maildir Dovecot New kid on the block; you like living on the edge I highly and heartily recommend cyrus. 20,000 messages in a folder? 30,000? More (debian-user archive, anyone)? Want the server to handle sorting your mail for you? Thanks to Debian it's pretty easy to set up, and getting postfix to talk to it is cake. I also never liked both local and IMAP access to the same mail store. It just seems dangerous to me. The fact that cyrus uses it's own mail store that is not directly accessible is to me a feature. It also lets users make filtering rules without understanding a rule writing language thanks to sieve and the avelsieve plugin for squirrelmail. It may seem excessive if you're the only user, but it works so well that if you're going to run your own IMAP server anyways it may as well be cyrus. I did use Dovecot briefly to access a massive email archive from several years ago. It was in maildir format and I wanted to move the entire contents to my cyrus store. Worked fine then, and if you like maildir it sure was easier to deal with than Courier (we didn't get along). -- Steve Block http://ev-15.com/ http://www.steveblock.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On Sun, Jun 05, 2005 at 04:06:42PM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: > It is not a silly response, it is factual. 500Mb of mail at an > average of 5Kb per message is 100,000 messages. 100,000 files in > a single directory is not "more efficient for individual deletes" Okay, at the risk of starting a flame war, it's still silly. Allowing users to have 100,000 messages in a single directory is insane, and is purely the fault of the administrator for not forcing users to download, sort, archive, or otherwise deal with their mail in a sensible way. Use inode quotas, for goodness sakes. That said, a modern filesystem such as XFS or ReiserFS gives pretty good performance even on directories with tens of thousands of entries. Moving 100,000 emails into a single file just shuffles the problem around. Appending to an mbox is reasonably efficient. But instead of inode consumption, you have CPU spikes when email applications try to locate individual emails inside a single huge text file, or disk spikes when someone deletes a single email out of the mbox and the other 99,999 emails need to get written back out to disk. All that is somewhat irrelevent, though, in that maildir was not designed to provide better performance (although it can, in some cases), but to provide guarantees that all messages are safely written to disk. It protects against file-locking issues, allows MUAs to flag messages individually, and allows for manipulation (e.g. editing or deletion) of individual messages without affecting others messages. In short, its primary goal is data availability. You've really made my point point for me: the benefit of mbox or maildir is heavily dependent on its usage. In your case, because of the *way* you and your users manage mail on your systems, mbox makes sense in your environment. For other environments, maildir offers a different set of optimizations that can improve performance and reliability. Personally, I use both, for different reasons and in places where they make sense. Always use the right tool for the job at hand; zealotry is inefficient. -- Re-Interpreting Historic Miracles with SED #141: %s/water/wine/g -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: On IMAP servers (was: Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?)
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 12:23:43AM -0300, Rogério Brito wrote: > On Jun 05 2005, Steve Lamb wrote: > > I'd say go with UW's IMAP server. > > I'd say go with UW's IMAP server *only* if your computer isn't facing the > Internet -- it has a bad security track history and many people don't trust > it. > > > as far as I can tell there is none. Either it works or it doesn't. :D > > Same thing with Courier. There are some things that can be configured, but > the defaults are sane, especially those employed by the Debian packaged > version. > > Just to be fair, though, Courier's reputation is *not* that good also > (hint: see what "Binc IMAP" means and you'll get it), but it works fine. > > I hope to find some time to evaluate the many IMAP servers side-by-side and > create a good report of my experiences. > > > Anyway, that is what I use here. UW for IMAP, squirrel for web based, > > mutt for local when I really need it, Thunderbird through IMAP 99.9% of > > the time. > > Here I agree with the method for flexibility of reading e-mail. > > Not only Thunderbird, but other MUAs, independently of what platform you're > confined to use. That's the beauty of IMAP, IMVHO. > Short summary of popular IMAP servers: server why you would use it -- UW IMAP You are a masochist Cyrus IMAP You need *serious* scalability (e.g., 100,000 users with accounts on 8 clustered servers using Cyrus Murder) You want to virtual host or setup mail accounts without requiring a corresponding shell account Courier IMAPYou want low maint/like Maildir Dovecot New kid on the block; you like living on the edge -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr pgpEUvnrANoSU.pgp Description: PGP signature
On IMAP servers (was: Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?)
On Jun 05 2005, Steve Lamb wrote: > I'd say go with UW's IMAP server. I'd say go with UW's IMAP server *only* if your computer isn't facing the Internet -- it has a bad security track history and many people don't trust it. > as far as I can tell there is none. Either it works or it doesn't. :D Same thing with Courier. There are some things that can be configured, but the defaults are sane, especially those employed by the Debian packaged version. Just to be fair, though, Courier's reputation is *not* that good also (hint: see what "Binc IMAP" means and you'll get it), but it works fine. I hope to find some time to evaluate the many IMAP servers side-by-side and create a good report of my experiences. > Anyway, that is what I use here. UW for IMAP, squirrel for web based, > mutt for local when I really need it, Thunderbird through IMAP 99.9% of > the time. Here I agree with the method for flexibility of reading e-mail. Not only Thunderbird, but other MUAs, independently of what platform you're confined to use. That's the beauty of IMAP, IMVHO. -- Rogério Brito : [EMAIL PROTECTED] : http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito Homepage of the algorithms package : http://algorithms.berlios.de Homepage on freshmeat: http://freshmeat.net/projects/algorithms/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On 2005-06-06, Rogério Brito penned: > On Jun 05 2005, Monique Y. Mudama wrote: >> For the last few years, I've been running mutt directly on my mail >> server to access mbox-formatted mail. > > I have switched to mutt (from pine) since the pre-1.x days (it's ben > more than 7 years, as far as I can remember) just for reading my > mail in Maildir format and I haven't had any problems with that > (well, besides when Debian's mutt got some header cache problems, > but that was a problem with mutt and not with Maildir exactly). Yup; I'm not worried about mutt's ability to handle Maildir. I think I've been using mbox because I'm familiar with it and because I know that, push come to shove, more tools support mbox than support Maildir. I also have some logrotate stuff going on (I have procmail save messages to a "backup" mailbox before it applies any rules, then use logrotate to eventually phase out the really old stuff. It saves me from any malformed rules, and it also helps when I realize I've just accidentally deleted a useful email). [snip] >> Sometimes I get an email with a lot of links, and I'd like to just >> middle-click and open them in new tabs. > > This problem you can solve easily with urlview. No, not really. Well, sort of. On machines where I have an xserver installed, I can use that approach, but it's noticably laggier (UI-wise) than running the browser locally. And on machines where I can't run an xserver, it's obviously not an option. And I didn't know that urlview could open things in new tabs of an existing session, but I guess there's no reason it couldn't. (It's just occured to me I could probably cobble together some Java using RMI to address the issue of calling a browser on a different machine ... sounds like a project! I hope no one's done it already.) [snip] >> Yeah, that's just not going to work for me. IMAP is really just a >> means to the end of webmail for me, but webmail is only a secondary >> concern; I need to be able to run mutt, and being able to use >> grepmail and similar utilities is also pretty important. > > What's the problem with having mutt access your mail via IMAP on > your local machine? I've been doing this for quite some time and it > works quite well. And it also opens the possibility of you using, > say, horde as a webmail server which can contact courier-imap to do > its job. It's been a while since I've used IMAP with a regular client, but IIRC it's slower and more cumbersome than direct access. Specifically, it takes a while to load mailboxes, and I have some very large mailboxes. There's also the issue of having to deal with passwords or some sort of authentication method. > It may be that courier and horde aren't the best solutions to the > problem, but the infra-structure that you'll use will mostly be like > that, in terms of the problem you're trying to solve. I've had some trouble installing horde, actually, and I just kind of got annoyed and gave up. Horde provides way, way more than I actually need or want. Dovecot and squirrelmail seem to be okay so far ... -- monique Ask smart questions, get good answers: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On Jun 05 2005, Monique Y. Mudama wrote: > For the last few years, I've been running mutt directly on my mail > server to access mbox-formatted mail. I have switched to mutt (from pine) since the pre-1.x days (it's ben more than 7 years, as far as I can remember) just for reading my mail in Maildir format and I haven't had any problems with that (well, besides when Debian's mutt got some header cache problems, but that was a problem with mutt and not with Maildir exactly). > I adore mutt, but there are a few situations when webmail is handy. Yes, unfortunately. And the way I have things set up here, I use fetchmail to get my e-mail from a dozen accounts, feed it to qmail, then qmail calls procmail which calls spamassassin and then everything is delivered into its proper Maildir. I use courier-imap-ssl here on my personal machine so that I can switch the MUA as much as I want. And that includes using webmail. I simply can't live without IMAP(S) after "seeing the light". The only thing that I am not really sure about is the IMAP server to use: dovecot, courier or bincimap. The last time I checked (which was quite some time ago), bincimap was much slower than courier and I didn't have the time to play with dovecot, but I think that those projects have now progressed to the point of a re-evaluation. > Sometimes I get an email with a lot of links, and I'd like to just > middle-click and open them in new tabs. This problem you can solve easily with urlview. BTW, some really nice add-ons to mutt are, IMVHO: * urlview * post-el (for people using Emacs) * muttprint (generates really nice output from emails) * lbdb (way too handy to use with vCards and gnome-pim, for instance) > So, to summarize, I mostly want to use mutt to access my mail directly on > the server, but every now and then I also want to view my mail using a > web client. Yes, installing an IMAP server is the way to go, IMVHO. > Yeah, that's just not going to work for me. IMAP is really just a > means to the end of webmail for me, but webmail is only a secondary > concern; I need to be able to run mutt, and being able to use grepmail > and similar utilities is also pretty important. What's the problem with having mutt access your mail via IMAP on your local machine? I've been doing this for quite some time and it works quite well. And it also opens the possibility of you using, say, horde as a webmail server which can contact courier-imap to do its job. It may be that courier and horde aren't the best solutions to the problem, but the infra-structure that you'll use will mostly be like that, in terms of the problem you're trying to solve. Hope this helps, Rogério. -- Rogério Brito : [EMAIL PROTECTED] : http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito Homepage of the algorithms package : http://algorithms.berlios.de Homepage on freshmeat: http://freshmeat.net/projects/algorithms/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
Monique Y. Mudama wrote: > Squirrelmail seems to be extremely popular as a webmail client, so I > went with that. I chose Dovecot because it seemed pretty light-weight > and simple. I'd say go with UW's IMAP server. It's not feature rich or perfect but for home use it does the job. Configuration is simple... as far as I can tell there is none. Either it works or it doesn't. :D Anyway, that is what I use here. UW for IMAP, squirrel for web based, mutt for local when I really need it, Thunderbird through IMAP 99.9% of the time. No need to convert from mbox to maildir. -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your PGP Key: 8B6E99C5 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+- signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On 2005-06-05, Lee Braiden penned: > On Sunday 05 Jun 2005 05:51, Monique Y. Mudama wrote: >> So I finally bit the bullet and installed IMAP so that I could use >> one of the non-openwebmail webmails. Squirrelmail's docs make a >> big point of how if you're running mbox and don't make sure the >> locking mechanisms are well-coordinated, you run a risk of turning >> your mailboxes into hamburger. > > I'm not entirely sure of what you're trying to do here. Good point. I wasn't exactly clear, was I? For the last few years, I've been running mutt directly on my mail server to access mbox-formatted mail. I adore mutt, but there are a few situations when webmail is handy. Sometimes I don't have the time to install and configure an ssh client on the machine to which I have access, for example. Sometimes I get an email with a lot of links, and I'd like to just middle-click and open them in new tabs. Stuff like that. So for a while now, I've been using openwebmail, which is mildly annoying but did the job without requiring IMAP or MailDir. Now it seems that openwebmail isn't considered to be all that great, has lots of security vulnerabilities and IIRC is no longer being maintained as a Debian package. So I had a look around. Squirrelmail seems to be extremely popular as a webmail client, so I went with that. I chose Dovecot because it seemed pretty light-weight and simple. So, to summarize, I mostly want to use mutt to access my mail directly on the server, but every now and then I also want to view my mail using a web client. I have screen running all the time, so mutt will almost certainly be open to my inbox when I open up the webmail client. > But if you just need IMAP functionality for some web interface, and > want it to be fast and lock-safe, then there's another option: dbmail. > > It'll store mails in a mysql database for you (postgresql too, but it > seems to be optimised for mysql). Shouldn't be any access issues, > since dbmail's IMAP interface and its own client utilities do all the > access. Chances are, if you're running web stuff, you'll be using > mysql anyway. > > The only downside is that you lose direct access to the files, so > running spamassassin on your spam folder becomes a lot harder, *if* > you want to keep your spam folder in IMAP too, that is. Yeah, that's just not going to work for me. IMAP is really just a means to the end of webmail for me, but webmail is only a secondary concern; I need to be able to run mutt, and being able to use grepmail and similar utilities is also pretty important. > Anyone have a script for processing remote IMAP folders with > spamassassin, by the way? ;) Good luck with that! -- monique Ask smart questions, get good answers: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On Sunday 05 Jun 2005 05:51, Monique Y. Mudama wrote: > So I finally bit the bullet and installed IMAP so that I could use one > of the non-openwebmail webmails. Squirrelmail's docs make a big point > of how if you're running mbox and don't make sure the locking > mechanisms are well-coordinated, you run a risk of turning your > mailboxes into hamburger. I'm not entirely sure of what you're trying to do here. But if you just need IMAP functionality for some web interface, and want it to be fast and lock-safe, then there's another option: dbmail. It'll store mails in a mysql database for you (postgresql too, but it seems to be optimised for mysql). Shouldn't be any access issues, since dbmail's IMAP interface and its own client utilities do all the access. Chances are, if you're running web stuff, you'll be using mysql anyway. The only downside is that you lose direct access to the files, so running spamassassin on your spam folder becomes a lot harder, *if* you want to keep your spam folder in IMAP too, that is. Anyone have a script for processing remote IMAP folders with spamassassin, by the way? ;) -- Lee. Please do not CC replies directly to me. I'll read them on the list. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
Todd A. Jacobs wrote: > This is a silly response. Maildir and mbox have different efficiencies; > it depends on what you're optimizing for. Maildir requires no locking, > and is more efficient for indivdual deletes; It is not a silly response, it is factual. 500Mb of mail at an average of 5Kb per message is 100,000 messages. 100,000 files in a single directory is not "more efficient for individual deletes" when you're a mail administrator trying to reduce the mail load so the customer's machine won't time out while connecting to the server to retrieve mail. You can't even do simple file operations to know which files to delete without the machine taking several minutes. Any file globbing is out of the question since it will more than likely exceed the maximum number of arguments and filename completion again causes excessive pauses. In short every operation for manipulation the messages is just shot to hell. A comparable mbox, on the other hand, you can at least do all of the above without having a book handy. The only operation which takes quite a while would be opening up the file in a text editor. Of course that operation is faster than anything requiring traversing the directory and once open operations are far faster. Maildir is good on paper. In practice and in contact with customers maildir falls flat on its face. In the years of admining mbox at an ISP with 7,000 customers I never had corruption issues and mail problems like the above were resolved in a few minutes. My last job at a smaller hosting company with only hundreds of customers I routinely had to fix maildir's problems and spend an ungodly amount of time (30-40m) per problem because I had to work around not being able to file glob, do a simple directory listing, etc. I don't consider that "silly" in the lest and given the inclination of us unix geeks to keep thousands of messages lying around for years on end it is certainly a concern that should be passed on to any potential person thinking of maildir. -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your PGP Key: 8B6E99C5 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+- signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On Sun, Jun 05, 2005 at 07:19:15AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: > Strictly speaking mbox is no different. It is just a text file, > [...] > wrong side of maildir give me mbox any day of the week. At least > with mbox 500Mb of mail won't choke the machine into near > uselessness. This is a silly response. Maildir and mbox have different efficiencies; it depends on what you're optimizing for. Maildir requires no locking, and is more efficient for indivdual deletes; mbox makes more efficient use of inodes and disk space, but requires locking and is less efficient for manipulating individual emails. Which is "better" is highly situational, but in general: - mbox is almost universally supported. - maildir is safer on high-volume or remote-mounted systems. As always, people should make up their own minds as to what works best for them, rather than rely on purely anecdotal responses like this one. -- Re-Interpreting Historic Miracles with SED #141: %s/water/wine/g -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On Sun, Jun 05, 2005 at 07:19:15AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: } Monique Y. Mudama wrote: } > While I understand that maildir allows you to isolate corruption to } > single messages instead of the entire mailbox, I guess corruption just } > seems so unlikely that I haven't worried about it. I'm sure it will } > bite me soon. } } Strictly speaking mbox is no different. It is just a text file, nothing } more. And let's not get into "what is a text file on unix" discussion } again, kay? Anyway, corruption will have an effect on one message. } Load it in a text editor, go to it, clear it out. Simple as that. } Anything which could wipe large swathes of messages could do it just as } easily to maildir. Trust me, maildir isn't all that and a bag of chips. } Having been on the wrong side of maildir give me mbox any day of the } week. At least with mbox 500Mb of mail won't choke the machine into near } uselessness. This is incorrect information. If two programs are attempting to manipulate the same file at the same time there are a variety of problems that can occur. The best you can hope for is that the changes made by one program are completely overwritten by the other program, which means you may lose email messages accidentally. At worst, your mbox can wind up truncated or garbled with interleaved data. That said, if you think about your particular setup there are really three programs that can be working on your spool at the same time: your MDA (e.g. exim), your MUA (e.g. mutt), and your IMAP server (e.g. dovecot). Given that dovecot *must* know how not to step on the toes of the MDA, and likewise mutt knows how not to step on the MDA's toes, your locking problems are probably minimal. Furthermore, since you're the only one interacting with that particular mail spool (if I understand correctly), you can be pretty sure that you won't have locking problems since you will be interacting with the spool either via squirrelmail (i.e. through IMAP) or via mutt, but not both at the same time. There's been a raging debate about mbox vs. maildir for as long as both have existed. Both sides claim the other is inefficient. Both make claims of corruption. As far as I can tell it is only in rare cases, usually involving network filesystems (NFS, usually), that anyone experiences problems with either one. This is solved by dealing with mail remotely via IMAP, a protocol suited to the purpose, rather than using a networked filesystem. That made less sense when all we had was mail and elm, but mutt and the innumerable graphical and web clients all support IMAP. Use dovecot and mbox, use courier and maildir, whatever. I talked about courier and maildir because that's what I chose, and I've had no difficulty with it. } Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your --Greg -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
Monique Y. Mudama wrote: > While I understand that maildir > allows you to isolate corruption to single messages instead of the > entire mailbox, I guess corruption just seems so unlikely that I > haven't worried about it. I'm sure it will bite me soon. Strictly speaking mbox is no different. It is just a text file, nothing more. And let's not get into "what is a text file on unix" discussion again, kay? Anyway, corruption will have an effect on one message. Load it in a text editor, go to it, clear it out. Simple as that. Anything which could wipe large swathes of messages could do it just as easily to maildir. Trust me, maildir isn't all that and a bag of chips. Having been on the wrong side of maildir give me mbox any day of the week. At least with mbox 500Mb of mail won't choke the machine into near uselessness. -- Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your PGP Key: 8B6E99C5 | main connection to the switchboard of souls. ---+- signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
On Sat, Jun 04, 2005 at 10:51:16PM -0600, Monique Y. Mudama wrote: } So I finally bit the bullet and installed IMAP so that I could use one } of the non-openwebmail webmails. Squirrelmail's docs make a big point } of how if you're running mbox and don't make sure the locking } mechanisms are well-coordinated, you run a risk of turning your } mailboxes into hamburger. } } How do I find out if mutt and dovecot see eye-to-eye on locking } mechanisms? } } I've heard lots about how dangerous mbox is and how I should probably } not even be using it, but I've been using mbox for an awfully long } time now, and I have a feeling that converting my system would be } non-trivial. Or at least annoying. While I understand that maildir } allows you to isolate corruption to single messages instead of the } entire mailbox, I guess corruption just seems so unlikely that I } haven't worried about it. I'm sure it will bite me soon. For similar reasons, I installed courier-imap and squirrelmail. Courier uses maildir instead of mbox, and maildir does not require locking. I've been looking into moving my old mail (in mboxes) over to maildirs. I've installed mb2md and it seems to do a good job of converting mbox files to maildirs. I can use mutt directly on the maildirs with no difficulty. I generally use mutt to connect via IMAP, though. I have the folders variable set to the IMAP URL and mailboxes set to = and a couple others. It works nicely. I haven't tried dovecot, but I like Courier. My wife has been connecting to it with Mozilla mail, Thunderbird, and MacOS X's Mail.app for a couple of years. I'm just migrating to it, but it's been working nicely for me. } monique --Greg -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?
So I finally bit the bullet and installed IMAP so that I could use one of the non-openwebmail webmails. Squirrelmail's docs make a big point of how if you're running mbox and don't make sure the locking mechanisms are well-coordinated, you run a risk of turning your mailboxes into hamburger. How do I find out if mutt and dovecot see eye-to-eye on locking mechanisms? I've heard lots about how dangerous mbox is and how I should probably not even be using it, but I've been using mbox for an awfully long time now, and I have a feeling that converting my system would be non-trivial. Or at least annoying. While I understand that maildir allows you to isolate corruption to single messages instead of the entire mailbox, I guess corruption just seems so unlikely that I haven't worried about it. I'm sure it will bite me soon. -- monique -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
