> Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 12:08:44 -0600
> From: David Rock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Mutt Users List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: maildir over mbox?
>
> I was just wondering what the real differences were between maildir and
> mbox formats? I know mbox is an appended file while maildir is a
> separate directory for each mail (each what, exactly)?
>
> What are the benefits of using one type over the other?
<quote>
mbox
This is the traditional mailbox format. It is a simple plain text
file with the messages in it. Each message has this structure:
From [EMAIL PROTECTED] date
Headers
<empty line>
Body
<empty line>
Since MUAs recognize the beginning of a message in an mbox by a line
starting with "From " (this is commonly called "the From_ line"),
any lines in message bodies starting with this string will get
rewritten as ">From " by your MDA.
It is not a good idea to use this mailbox format if you have your
mail on a NFS share. Many NFS implementations have buggy locking,
and you can easily have your mailboxes stomped.
See mbox(5) for more info (different man pages installed at least
with mutt and qmail).
maildir
This is a newer format, introduced by the qmail MTA. Each mailbox is
a directory containing three subdirectories: tmp/, new/, and cur/.
When your MDA delivers a message to a maildir mailbox, it writes it
to the tmp/ directory, and when the message is succesfully written,
it moves it to the new/ directory. Since this is atomical operation,
the mailbox is safe from curruption.
It is quite safe to use over NFS.
Also, it can be easier when you want to process your mail using regular
tools provided in the base system: you can use a small shell script to
move old mail away from your "active" mailboxes to an "archive" using
find(1), xargs(1), and alike.
This format can get _very_ slow with large mailboxes on filesystems that do
not handle directoris with many files in them. This should include the
Linux ext2fs.
FreeBSD post-4.4 FFS with softupdates and dirhash should shine with this
format.
See maildir(5) (installed at least with qmail) for more info.
</quote>
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