On Sun, 9 Feb 2003 23:46:26 -0800, Vineet Kumar wrote: > > * Cameron Matheson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [030209 22:25]: > > Hi, > > > > On Sun, Feb 09, 2003 at 08:00:52PM -0800, Vineet Kumar wrote: > > > Well, you can tar and compress a maildir, and then it only > > > takes 1, same as an mbox. That works fine for archiving, > > > though is not as convenient for active mailboxes. I also > > > don't really buy that a maildir is difficult to back up > > > (especially if you tar.(gz|bz2) it). I like using maildirs > > > mostly because mbox feels like a dirty hack, with the whole > > > "From " thing. I also like the increased scriptability > > > using standard GNU tools like grep to find and process > > > individual messages, instead of having to use some sort of > > > mbox-parsing perl module. > > > > What do you mean by the "From "-thing? I have always just > > used mbox because that is what fetchmail puts my mail into > > but this thread has aroused my interest in maildir... Can i > > use maildir w/ fetchmail/exim? If not, how does one get > > maildir, and what are the technical advantages? > > An mbox file is a file with all the messages laid out in it > end-to-end, separated by lines beginning with "From ". Any > lines in the body of a message that begin with "From " are then > munged into ">From " by the program delivering into the mbox. > That's just a dirty, dirty hack. Add to that that the file > needs to be locked properly(and that file locking on NFS is not > perfect) in order to prevent it from getting corrupted (and > that corrupting the file means corrupting a whole mailbox, not > a single message) and you have a technologically inferior mail > storage design, IMHO. On the other hand, it's the original way > of doing things, so support for it is universal. Also, loading > an mbox is generally faster than loading a maildir.
There are ways of cheating, like having an index. > Exim will happily deliver into maildirs if you uncomment the > "maildir_format" line in the address_directory transport (and > somehow specify the directory you'd like to deliver to, perhaps > via .forward or by making a director that checks if ~/Maildir/ > or ~/Inbox/ exists and delivering there if so). I don't know > about fetchmail, but if you have it configured to deliver via > SMTP through the local exim anyway, it shouldn't be an issue. > I do know that procmail and maildrop both support delivery into > maildirs. The procmail (or maildrop) solution is IMHO better than having one program to rule them all. One program to fetch(mail), another to deliver (exim), and another to filter (procmail). > As for MUA support, I know mutt does, but I'm not 100% sure of > others. It's fairly widely supported at this point, and I'd > guess that the popular X GUI mailers (sylpheed, kmail, > evolution) do support it as well. I see that you're using > mutt, though, so you'll be fine. Unless some new feature was added to CVS, Sylpheed(-claws) supports MH, which isn't quite maildir. KMail supports maildir in addition to what I believe is its version of mbox. I haven't tried Evolution in ages. My User-Agent of choice, Wanderlust (an elisp program running under Emacs) supports all three, mbox, MH and maildir. MH uses raw numerals to name each separate message; maildir uses something fancier. I like MH because to delete mail I can forego the fussiness of the MUA and just "cd" to the MH folder, type, say, "rm 12??" and thereby remove messages 1200 to 1299 all in one go. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
