2000-05-07-05:28:39 Ookhoi:
> > I've been using Maildir for a couple of years now, started when
> > I tried out qmail several years back, when I switched to Postfix
> > I used procmail with maildir patches to stick with the Maildir
> > format. I subscribe to dozens of lists, with varying amounts
> > of traffic, totals c. 600 messages a day, and keep all email
> > forever, so my archives are a valuable resource.
>
> Aren't you running out of inodes, and wasting disk space with
> Maildir? I receive about 1400 messages a day, and I think I would
> run out of inodes, or at least waste a _lot_ of disk space.
I keep 'em on the big ext2 that's my entire system. At the moment
that ext2 is running 56% full on space, with 15% inode utilization.
But I'll admit, at the moment I'm only keeping the last few months
broken out into Maildirs; after a few months I pack the remaining
messages into mboxes. I'm hoping before too much longer to have a
Reiserfs to keep 'em on; if that happens then I'll certainly keep
them all in Maildir, since that should be nicely efficient.
> > I like having the ability to use standard Unix tools to manipulate
> > my archives, with each message available as a distinct file.
> > Migrating messages to different folders by date, hooking a search
> > engine up, doing broad analyses, looking for historical data by
> > sender, subject, keyword, whatever; I find these all very pleasing
> > to do with a one-message-per-file format.
>
> Some of the things you metion can also be done with mbox format I think?
_Anything_ can be done with _Any_ format. The question is, how much
custom programming is required to do it?
Whenever I want to automate edits or manipulations of mbox files
with shell scripting, invariably the first step is to break 'em up
into messages, and the last step is to reassemble the mbox files.
Maildir lets me skip those steps.
-Bennett
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