On Thu, Aug 26, 1999, Michael Elkins ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said:
|
| On Thu, Aug 26, 1999 at 04:51:04PM +1000, Craig McVean wrote:
| >
| > Could someone explain the diffs between Mailder
| > and mbox, and which is best
|
| This is detailed fairly well in the manual in the section on mailbox types.
| As for which is best, maildir probably works faster for large mailboxes since
| each message is stored in a separate file, so things like deleting message
| 50 of 1000 happen instantaneously whereas in a mbox style you have to rewrite
| half of the mailbox to delete the one in the middle. This is also true for
| updating the message status (marking messages as read or replied to).
OTOH, maildir (or other 1-msg-per-file types of mailboxes) will eat up
more disk space than will an mbox style mailbox (or its varients).
This is because the filesystem allocates space for files in blocks of
some fixed size (commonly 1k or 4k). So, if using 1k blocks, a message
of (say) 1100 bytes, will end up using two blocks, or 2048 bytes. And
100 similar sized messages (~110,000 bytes, or ~107k) will end up using
over 200 1k blocks; an mbox with the same messages will use about 108
1k blocks. Etc.
Of course the lossage varies with the average size of the messages one
typically receives, with the lossage becomming less, as the average msg
size grows, but maildir boxes will always require more actual disk space
than will mbox's.
The lossage will typically be worse if your filesystem allocates files
in 4k blocks.
Depending on how many messages one typically keeps around, and how big
one's disk(s) are, this may or may not be something to consider.
Also, some feature patches (compressed folder support, text flag support)
that are not part of the "official" distribution, but are often used by
patching the source, only work (currently) with mbox style mailboxen.
Another factor you may want to consider.
Personally, I've never found any good reason to use anything other than
mbox style boxes. They are also easier to do "external" things with (like
grep'ing the contents, etc), and seem to have fewer problems with "new mail"
notification/indication.
YMMV ...
/kim
