From: kevin lyda (kevin at domain suberic.net)
Date: Tue 24 Aug 1999 - 13:21:00 IST
Nick Hilliard spoke thusly:
>Basically, but it uses a few tricks to ensure that file locking is not
>required (like tagging messages with time-since-epoch, pid and hostname),
>and having 3 directories for various purposes.
great, and for large mail sites i'm sure it rocks. but the original
topic was the mbox format for message storage. for all but the largest
sites mbox will work fine with mx records, raid, pop and imap negating
the need for nfs. gnome's target market of end users should be able to
access mail server foozle using storage format wangle via pop or imap,
snarf the mail, and then dump it in an mbox. that way the user can dump
gnome-mailer if they hate it, and switch to pine, elm, mutt, mail, etc.
they can even switch to mh or rmail if they like (they'll just find it
tough to switch back. rmail's babyl format is most annoying in this
sense).
as i said, mbox has problems. nfs also has problems. sadly these
problems coincide: locking. it is possible to configure mail services
to avoid nfs mounting mail spools - and i've even heard of people
running mail servers with nfs mounted mail spools successfully with no
file corruption. like the loch ness monster, i'll believe it when i've
hung out with it for a few years, but there ya go.
kevin
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