Re: Which Imap server
On 18 Jan 2002, Ross Burton wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-01-18 at 15:16, Erik van der Meulen wrote:
> > Dear list - I am currently building a new server and have 'apt-cache
> > searched' a few different imap servers.
> > Any suggestions which is the best pick on Potato serving a few Outlook
> > Express, some Mutt and an odd Evolution mail client?
>
> Courier-IMAP. Easy to configure (you don't need too), easy to setup
> (just read 'man maildirmake' several times) and fast.
>
uw-imapd is even easier. you don't have to deal with maildirs (unless you
want to. See below.)
Except for people who have to deal with Outlook or serve truly huge
volumes of mail, I don't think maildir offers any really advantages over
any other format.
> Many people swear by UoW IMAPD, but administrators generally swear _at_
> it after a while. mbox storage is slow and dangerous, and it has
> problems with multiple connections.
>
it depends on the kind of operation you're doing. The whole mbox has to
be read into memory which for large mailoxes can take time and memory.
But once that happens, random access is fast. With maildirs less memory
is needed but more inodes. Reading a single message is quick but
searching across a lot can take a lot of disk access. Mind you using
something like ReiserFS could mitigate a lot of those problems. One big
problem with MS Outlook in particular (not Outlook Express) is as you
mentioned mbox doesn't deal with concurrent access too well. Or folders
within folders.
On Debian using uw-imapd doesn't mean being stuck with mbox. I have
patched it to support maildirs too. There is a backport of the latest
version available from http://www.braincells.com/open/
--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar@debian.org>
It's a girl! See the pictures - http://www.braincells.com/shailaja/
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