On Thu, Nov 16, 2000 at 12:16:39PM +0000, Sujit Choudhury wrote:
> Can anybody tell me all or some of the following things about MBX
> format mailboxes on Unix machines used with EXIM MTA:
>
> 1. Is it possible to share individual folder (not all the folders of
> one person)?
Nope. You're thinking WindowZ here. There are hacks that you can do to
allow those things, but you need to use maildirs -- and they involve
lots of hard links and the like.
> 2. Is it possible to share INBOX?
Yes. But it's not ideal.
> 3. If the server crashes when the mail delivery is in progress, then
> what happens? Does the INBOX/folder gets corrupted? Does the index
> gets corrupted? Are there any utility which should be run after a
> server crash?
Server crash? this is unix...
Serously, that's a windows problem. All writes to files are done to a
temporary file that is then moved (atomic op).
Again, use maildirs if you are afraid of this happening.
> 4. Is it easy to deliver mail directly to user's home area?
No different to devlivering it into /var/spool/mail and easier for
quotas.
> 5. How much memory is needed? For example in the case of mbox format
> the whole INBOX has to be read when it first starts and requires large
> amount of swap space. Can I assume that in the case MBX format only
> the index of the INBOX will be loaded in the memory?
Depends on a lot of things. It's hard to say.
> 6. If MBX format does allow sharing, and 3 people are reading the
> INBOX and each deleting E-Mails, then whether the action takes place or
> gives an error?
This is a bad thing (tm) to do. If you do that then there is no
garantees as to which version is seen last.
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Dr Yann Golanski Internet Systems Developer
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