djc@??? said:
> Does anyone know where I can find information, including pros/cons on
> any/all of the following mailbox formats? Also, I have read in the
> exim FAQ on how to use MMDF format boxes, and of course unix format is
> pretty standard, but does anyone know about setting up exim to do any
> of these others?
This smells like the support list for the Washington IMAP server -
which pretty much handles exactly this set of formats
> + mbox
> + unix
These 2 are pretty much synonymous. Mbox is also basically
undocumented other than reverse engineering by each package supporting
it. There is also a system V variant (which I think is what they may
be referring to as the unix variant) where the length of the body of
the message is marked off by the Content-Length header (ie no searching
for From_ markers and so no problems with included From_ lines, but if
the MIME headers are wrong it will break big time).
supported by exim appendfile
> + mbx
supported by the exim appendfile transport. Documented in the
Washington IMAP pkg and I think there are some other docs within exim
(maybe source). Used by Oxford uni for their large scale mail system
implementation
> + mh
use and poorly documented in the MH package - latest maintained
offshoot is at
http://www.math.gatech.edu/nmh/
MH is a nice application mailbox setup. Its lousy from a system point
of view, because you effectively have to lock and modify in place a
single file (sequence file - also generating sequential file numbers is
painful under multiple writers).
> + mmdf
> + mtx
> + mx
> + news
Documented in the news rfcs.
> + phile
> + tenex
I would guess unless you have legacy to support for some reason, or
maybe an unusual requirement that a format happens to fit, the mailbox
formats to watch are:-
mbox - horrid, but a de-facto standard
mbx - apparently has some advantages in high throughput mail systems
maildir - good for multiple access, esp over NFS, without locking
issues.
I happen to use MH for my own mail directories, but people that do that
are best advised to use procmail and convert on receipt of messages
(BTW remember you need to lock the folder you use if you use procmail
with rcvstore since that can lose you mail and corrupt sequence files
for you).
Nigel.
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[ Nigel Metheringham Nigel.Metheringham@??? ]
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