Re: Maildirs in Debian

[Adam Lazur <zal@debian.org>]

Nate Campi (nate@campin.net) said:
> True, not the best proof, but opening that mail folder on ext3 takes
> only a second or two with mutt, and opening it on reiserfs with mutt
> takes 30 seconds or more. ext3/maildir is a fast and reliable mail
> folder combo

It appears you're not the only one who noticed this, the passage below
is taken from http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-fs2.html

    You may also run into problems with code that performs bunches of
    stat() calls on large numbers of files. One application that seems
    to trigger this performance defect (which only exists with the
    ReiserFS implementation in 2.4 series kernels, and not 2.2 kernels)
    is the "mutt" mailer (see Resources) when it is used to read large
    maildir-style mailboxes. Apparently, mutt stats each mail file
    twice, which tends to hurt performance more than normal. The
    ReiserFS development team is aware of this particular problem and
    has identified its cause, and you should expect a solution to be
    included in ReiserFS 4, if not sooner.

-- 
Adam Lazur, Cluster Monkey