Looking for a guide on converting to Maildir. Here are our relevant specs. sendmail-8.12.11-4.RHEL3.6 (we may not be able to upgrade this due to too many modifications) imap-2002d-14 procmail-3.22-10.el3.centos.0 To a maildir setup... <rant> I was in a panic today at work because the backup server is filling up too quickly, backing up peoples email. Further it is not backing up often enough. I just lost all of today's email. I hate mbox and imap and outlook... </rant> All the maildir stuff I can find is postfix oriented. From what I can read in procmail man pages, it supports maildir and sendmail uses procmail as the LDA, hence sendmail "supports" it. -Jason -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- - - - Jason Pyeron PD Inc. http://www.pdinc.us - - Principal Consultant 10 West 24th Street #100 - - +1 (443) 269-1555 x333 Baltimore, Maryland 21218 - - - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- This message is copyright PD Inc, subject to license 20080407P00.
On Mon, 2011-01-03 at 20:17 -0500, Jason Pyeron wrote:> Looking for a guide on converting to Maildir. > Here are our relevant specs. > sendmail-8.12.11-4.RHEL3.6 (we may not be able to upgrade this due to too many > modifications) > imap-2002d-14 > procmail-3.22-10.el3.centos.0 > To a maildir setup... > <rant> > I was in a panic today at work because the backup server is filling up too > quickly, backing up peoples email. Further it is not backing up often enough. I > just lost all of today's email. I hate mbox and imap and outlook... > </rant> > All the maildir stuff I can find is postfix oriented.Because sendmail is rapidly fading into history?> From what I can read in > procmail man pages, it supports maildir and sendmail uses procmail as the LDA, > hence sendmail "supports" it.There are numerous IMAP servers that support maildir, and scripts to import MBOX files - that is how I would approach it. [But then I wouldn't use Maildir; I mean, really, who cares what format your messages are in - use IMAP and network access your message store. Cyrus IMAPd will index and filter all your messages for you].
On Tuesday, January 04, 2011 09:14:57 am Adam Tauno Williams wrote:> On Tue, 2011-01-04 at 15:06 +0100, Dominik Zyla wrote: > > Many people care about storage format.> And they are misguided in doing so. Details of message storage is an > internal [server's] problem.Hmmm, not quite. When selecting the file system on which to store e-mail, the storage format is significant; it's a 'small number of large files' versus 'large number of small files' issue then, and filesystems differ in their performance between them. Some filesystems slow down with large maildirs; some slow with large mboxes. If you support a hundred or a thousand users, make sure you allocate enough inodes on that mailstore filesystem if you use maildir. For POP-only servers mbox works fine. For IMAP servers where IMAP is the primary access means, not so fine. In my opinion, maildirs are great for rapidly changing dynamic folders, like the inbox, whereas mboxes are wonderful for archives, where they tend to take less disk space for the same number of messages, and tend to change more slowly. And when you have folders containing hundreds of thousands of e-mails (yes, hundreds of thousands, in one particular archive, I have) where the individual e-mails are quite short, the difference adds up. In my case, our primary e-mail server is Scalix, so that dictated the storage format. But, honestly, I personally would love to use a PostgreSQL backend so that real concurrent access is possible; I have users with Scalix mail folders that take a long time to rsync simply due to the number of messages (25-30 thousand in the inbox, and they are 'folder clueless' and don't want to throw anything away), and in order to get a consistent backup scalix has to be shut down during the rsync (even if the folder hasn't changed, rsync still has to read all those directory entries, which takes time); an ACID database backend (PostgreSQL, MySQL InnoDB, Oracle, etc) will allow a fully consistent backup to be taken while the database is active. And backup tools for such databases are very mature. Scalix 11 uses PostgreSQL, but not as the primary mailstore.
On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 7:17 PM, Jason Pyeron <jpyeron at pdinc.us> wrote:> Looking for a guide on converting to Maildir. > > Here are our relevant specs. > > sendmail-8.12.11-4.RHEL3.6 (we may not be able to upgrade this due to too many > modifications) > imap-2002d-14 > procmail-3.22-10.el3.centos.0 > > To a maildir setup... > > <rant> > I was in a panic today at work because the backup server is filling up too > quickly, backing up peoples email. Further it is not backing up often enough. I > just lost all of today's email. I hate mbox and imap and outlook... > </rant> > > All the maildir stuff I can find is postfix oriented. From what I can read in > procmail man pages, it supports maildir and sendmail uses procmail as the LDA, > hence sendmail "supports" it. > > -JasonRegardless of the maildir vs mbox argument, I would be seriously examining why you have painted yourself into a corner with your customized sendmail. Eventually, you will have to move on. What are the motivations for the customizations? Do newer or alternate MTAs have added features that can replace those customizations? Postfix can be highly customized through configuration and is not that difficult to learn. As a migration path, I would separate the MTA (sendmail) and the imap server. Go with cyrus or dovecot on a new machine (virtual?) and use imapsync to move messages to the new box during a maintenance window. As stated in other responses, cyrus has it's own mail storage format with individual files for each message and dovecot supports several formats including maildir. It should not be difficult to have your existing sendmail deliver messages to the new imap store either directly or with a very simple postfix MTA on the imap box. Once mail storage is fixed, you can start working on de-customizing your MTA. And with regard to backup space, it might be time to suck it up and tell your users that you need to implement mail quotas. How much are you backing up from "Sent" and "Trash" because nobody maintains their mail folders? A quota can be a great tool for teaching basic mail folder housekeeping. -- Jeff
On Tuesday, January 04, 2011 10:59:21 am Alan Hodgson wrote:> On January 4, 2011 07:36:27 am Lamar Owen wrote: > > But, honestly, I personally would love to use a > > PostgreSQL backend so that real concurrent access is possible;> dbmail with PostgreSQL works really well.Thanks for the pointer; may look at putting it into test with an alternate Exchange replacement.