* Cameron Matheson (cmatheson3@hotpop.com) [030209 22:25]: > Hi, > > On Sun, Feb 09, 2003 at 08:00:52PM -0800, Vineet Kumar wrote: > > Well, you can tar and compress a maildir, and then it only takes 1, same > > as an mbox. That works fine for archiving, though is not as convenient > > for active mailboxes. I also don't really buy that a maildir is > > difficult to back up (especially if you tar.(gz|bz2) it). I like using > > maildirs mostly because mbox feels like a dirty hack, with the whole > > "From " thing. I also like the increased scriptability using standard > > GNU tools like grep to find and process individual messages, instead of > > having to use some sort of mbox-parsing perl module. > > What do you mean by the "From "-thing? I have always just used mbox > because that is what fetchmail puts my mail into but this thread has > aroused my interest in maildir... Can i use maildir w/ fetchmail/exim? > If not, how does one get maildir, and what are the technical advantages? An mbox file is a file with all the messages laid out in it end-to-end, separated by lines beginning with "From ". Any lines in the body of a message that begin with "From " are then munged into ">From " by the program delivering into the mbox. That's just a dirty, dirty hack. Add to that that the file needs to be locked properly(and that file locking on NFS is not perfect) in order to prevent it from getting corrupted (and that corrupting the file means corrupting a whole mailbox, not a single message) and you have a technologically inferior mail storage design, IMHO. On the other hand, it's the original way of doing things, so support for it is universal. Also, loading an mbox is generally faster than loading a maildir. Exim will happily deliver into maildirs if you uncomment the "maildir_format" line in the address_directory transport (and somehow specify the directory you'd like to deliver to, perhaps via .forward or by making a director that checks if ~/Maildir/ or ~/Inbox/ exists and delivering there if so). I don't know about fetchmail, but if you have it configured to deliver via SMTP through the local exim anyway, it shouldn't be an issue. I do know that procmail and maildrop both support delivery into maildirs. As for MUA support, I know mutt does, but I'm not 100% sure of others. It's fairly widely supported at this point, and I'd guess that the popular X GUI mailers (sylpheed, kmail, evolution) do support it as well. I see that you're using mutt, though, so you'll be fine. good times, Vineet -- http://www.doorstop.net/ -- "Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited email message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community." - Roger Ebert, "The Boulder Pledge"
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