Re: [exim] I think I want to switch from mbox to maildir onD…

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Author: Matthew Exon
Date:  
To: Nigel Metheringham
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] I think I want to switch from mbox to maildir onDebian. How do I do that?
Nigel Metheringham wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-03-07 at 11:47 +0100, Matthew Exon wrote:
>
>>Wow, I sent this message and it just disappeared into the bitbucket
>>apparently. No bounce no nothing. At least, I can't see it in the
>>online archives. Or maybe I missed it, and no-one bothered replying?
>>I've subscribed to the list now, maybe that helps...
>
>
> The original message was put in the moderation queue - because you were
> not a subscriber. You were sent an automatic notification message
> regarding that. In this case it took a while until someone dealt with
> it because I was busy over the w/e (it arrived after I left Friday) and
> none of the other moderators picked it up (presumably for similar
> reasons).


Ah, I see. I thought I'd give it a few days. I never did receive a
notification message - or at least, I can't find it in my Trash folder.
I guess I might have accidentally deleted it permanently in the last
few days, but I can't remember ever receiving it.

>>>I have a problem with Mozilla Thunderbird. I can't delete mail folders
>>>that I've created, and I can't create subfolders of a normal folder -
>>>although I can create "special" greyed out folders by ending their name
>>>with a slash, which are allowed to contain other folders, but not email.
>
>
> Thats a thunderbird problem. Bit difficult to get support for that on
> an exim list.


A separate bugzilla bug has been entered for that. Thunderbird is just
where the problem becomes apparent - I'm trying to fix that problem, and
that's led me to exim.

>>>What I've discovered so far is that I probably want to change from
>>>"mbox" format to "maildir" format. This is hopefully flexible enough to
>>>cope with subfolders. From the sounds of it, maildir is the best format
>>>for all but a tiny minority of situations, so I'd be interested to know
>>>why Debian set me up using mbox by default in the first place, but
>>>anyway...
>
>
> mbox is basically the unix default. Maildir is a good format but
> supported by a minority of applications. I think your reason for
> changing is probably rather spurious.


Fair enough, I can see the value in sticking to the unix standard.
Thunderbird doesn't seem to handle it very elegantly, but that could
well be Thunderbird's problem.

>>...and in a bit of followup, yesterday I tried just upgrading from exim
>>to exim4. Hoo boy, I'm never doing that again! Exim just refused to
>>deliver anything and I went a whole day without receiving any email.
>>Even if I tried to send mail from my local machine, the email ended up
>>"Frozen" (I've replaced my username with "<username>" in the following):
>>
>>2005-03-07 11:00:05 Received from <username>@exon.dyndns.org
>>U=<username> P=local S=335
>>2005-03-07 11:00:05 <username>@exon.dyndns.org R=dnslookup defer (-1):
>>remote host address is the local host
>
>
> Basically your box doesn't know its own name (or more specifically local
> mail domains), and so you are trying to send locally destined messages
> out to a remote box - while the DNS says that your box is responsible
> for them. Suggest you try the Debian Exim4 list as thats more likely to
> be directly relevant to you:-
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-exim4-users


There was a debconf question (this is for exim 4 now) which asked me
which domains should be considered local, except for the name of the
machine ("charly.exon.dyndns.org") and "localhost". I entered
"exon.dyndns.org" and "aeon.exon.dyndns.org" (another host on my
network). That should work shouldn't it?

But yeah, sounds like the Debian Exim4 list is the right place to be, so
I'll move over there. Thanks for your help.

Mat