On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 05:09:03PM -0500, nixlists wrote: > On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 4:26 PM, Denis Doroshenko > <denis.doroshe...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 1/14/10, nixlists <nixmli...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Does it have the same reliability features as qmail on an FS without > >> softupdates? What about with softupdates? > >> > >> http://cr.yp.to/qmail/faq/reliability.html > > > > the very link you just provided contains the following sentence: > > > > Do not use async or softupdates filesystems. > > > Sorry, forget I mentioned softupdates. Does it do what qmail does? > Reliaibility-wise? > > "qmail's queue, except for bounce message contents, is crashproof on > the BSD FFS and most of its variants. " >
smtp ensures reliability by working on a temporary queue during writes, then commiting messages (all of them, including bounces) to the real queue using an atomic rename. after a successful rename, smtpd tells the client it accepted the message. with this ordering, you can never have smtpd in a state where it has lost a message after accepting it or where a message is incomplete and corrupt in the queue because of a power shortage happening at a wrong timing. either the message is in queue or it's not, and if it's not then client/mua was not told message is accepted. Gilles -- Gilles Chehade freelance developer/sysadmin/consultant http://www.poolp.org