My main mail server is a Windows box running Ipswitch Imail and it uses mbox (unix) message stores. There are lots of file locking issues, and easy corruption of indices, not to mention disk I/O issues causing message separations to be trashed and messages running together or fragmenting breaking all messages in the store, not just one. I know Imail completely rewrites the mailbox for each operation, and I am assuming that was adopted from unix based mail servers, since I have little experience using unix/linux mail servers, I do not know what the standard is. I do not easily see how mbox would improve file system issues since it increases fragmentation. I think the issue is a balance and a matter of preference.
BTW, if you look, you can set Xmail to either format, best done during initial install though, otherwise you need to find a conversion utility. Thanks, Chuck Frolick -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Sasa Stupar Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 3:12 AM To: Xmail-ML Subject: [xmail] Maildir or Unix format 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. ------------- Any comment on this and why Xmail is using Maildir instead of standard Unix format? Regards, Sasa -- Binary/unsupported file stripped by Ecartis -- -- Type: text/x-vcard -- File: sasa.vcf - 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] - 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]
