On Tue, Dec 26, 2000 at 10:53:37PM -0200, Marcelo Chiapparini wrote: > Hi! > what is the difference between a local mailspool and a local maildir?
Briefly, two different methods of getting the mail from the mail transport
agent (MTA, probably exim) to the mail user agent (the prog. you use to read
and compose mail, e.g., Mutt).
The following is from the Mutt reference manual:
4.6. Mailbox Formats
Mutt supports reading and writing of four different mailbox formats:
mbox, MMDF, MH and Maildir. The mailbox type is autodetected, so
there is no need to use a flag for different mailbox types. When
creating new mailboxes, Mutt uses the default specified with the
``$mbox_type'' variable.
mbox. This is the most widely used mailbox format for UNIX. All
messages are stored in a single file. Each message has a line of the
form:
From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:44:56 PST
to denote the start of a new message (this is often referred to as the
``From_'' line).
MMDF. This is a variant of the mbox format. Each message is
surrounded by lines containing ``^A^A^A^A'' (four control-A's).
MH. A radical departure from mbox and MMDF, a mailbox consists of a
directory and each message is stored in a separate file. The filename
indicates the message number (however, this is may not correspond to
the message number Mutt displays). Deleted messages are renamed with a
comma (,) prepended to the filename. Note: Mutt detects this type of
mailbox by looking for either .mh_sequences or .xmhcache (needed to
distinguish normal directories from MH mailboxes). Mutt does not
update these files, yet.
Maildir. The newest of the mailbox formats, used by the Qmail MTA (a
replacement for sendmail). Similar to MH, except that it adds three
subdirectories of the mailbox: tmp, new and cur. Filenames for the
messages are chosen in such a way they are unique, even when two
programs are writing the mailbox over NFS, which means that no file
locking is needed.
--
Henry House
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