but when it comes to the mail repository, as far as i know maildir storage is *not* the choice for replication.
Why?
Or are you implying that mbox storage is?
no
Or that neither is?
neither, it's not a problem with maildir, it's a general problem of maintaining files synchronized.
Basis for the theory?
ok, unison seems to be an option (as in: somebody on google seems to have gotten it to work reasonably). however i prefer to think of replicated instances as being constantly and correctly synchronized. the whole point of qmail and maildirs are that there is never any doubt about what messages exist or not. having something go off on cron even once every five minutes will negate this as well as piss off this particular sysop's overdemanding users. imagine, getting the same spam, twice! this guy uses pop, a imap/webmail service would be even worse off.
i regard reliability more important than availability as it comes to my mail, userland arrangements like these give me the creeps. i'm suggesting that he should try mitigating the reasons for his unavailability first. users should get used to 99.9% availability, and that's a reasonable figure for a non-replicated system. or look into some database system with built-in replication functionality.
anyway, have you any good examples to throw back at me?
/k
