>> 3) IMAP server > >> * maildir or some alternative indexed mailbox format. Use of standard >> unix mailbox format is not recommended. > > But mbox format still works flawlessly, no noticable speed issues even > with mbox's containing thousands of messages (albeit mailing list messages > where the largest single msg no doubt is under 100K) In order to read the mailbox IMAP server must load whole file. Mailbox can contain binary files. Photos, funny videos, etc. Situation is even worse when messages are deleted, moved or purged. For example manager's mailbox with 3-5 thousand messages can be bigger than 2 GB. Several months ago I had to convert several mailboxes from Kmail (maildir) to Evolution. One of them hit 2GB limit. I had to educate users that they must clean and manage their mailbox. In some cases mailbox starts hitting file system limits. Outlook Express and Mozilla store their mails in one file. It is not mbox format, but mail folder is stored in one file. Both programs have issues when box size is close to 2 GB. Even on NTFS. I would like to convert some users from outlook express to outlook, but storage of all data in one .pst file stops me from that. See http://www.washington.edu/imap/documentation/formats.txt.html ---- . unix This is the traditional UNIX mailbox format, in use for nearly 30 years. It uses a line starting with "From " to indicate start of message, and stores the message status inside theRFC822 message header. unix is not particularly efficient; the entire mailbox file must be read when the mailbox is open, and when reading message texts it is necessary to convert the newline convention to Internet standard CR LF form. unix preserves UIDs, and allows the creation of keywords. Only one process may have a unix-format mailbox open read/write at a time. ---- See also http://www.courier-mta.org/mbox-vs-maildir/ mbox format is well known and tested, but it is not designed to handle big mailboxes. -- Tomas ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ -- squirrelmail-users mailing list Posting Guidelines: http://www.squirrelmail.org/wiki/MailingListPostingGuidelines List Address: squirrelmail-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx List Archives: http://news.gmane.org/thread.php?group=gmane.mail.squirrelmail.user List Archives: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=2995 List Info: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/squirrelmail-users
