Re: Email programs that work.
On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 07:20:12AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
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> hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 05:51:27PM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
> >> I've yet to fathom a need for a 2 million message mailbox. Not to mention
> >> the support structure behind it since 2 million would break or strain both
> >> maildir and mbox.
> >
> > Perhaps reiserfs?
>
> I have an ext3 directory with close to 10^6 files in it, and it has
> no problem reading a single file. The app is pretty slow adding
> "the first" file, but after all the relevant data structures are
> cached, adding more files is a snap.
>
> The size of the average email in D-User (2006q3) is 5150.46 bytes,
> just a smidge over 5KiB.
>
> So an mbox with 2*10^6 d-User emails in it would be (decimal)
> 10.3GB. Do most mbox support libraries have long-file support?
> Even if they did, deleting an email from such a file would be
> painful in the extreme.
No. mbox isn't the way to go.
> As for Maildir, ext3 could handle that. Reiserfs could, but don't
> know what it would gain you, since it's forte' is *small* files, and
> I think that 5KiB is just a bit too big.
True. And reiser seems to have worse recovery problems when the
hardware fails.
>
> Either way, it is the MUA that must analyze the headers and put them
> in thread-order, and that would just be a beast.
>
> Besides, how does one manage a 2*10^6 email folder? My 21" monitor
> running at 1280x1024 can only display 45 email subjects. That would
> be *44,445* screens of emails. Totally unmanageable by humans.
Maybe one pixel per message? :-(
-- hendrik
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