I have been running a Dovecot based mail server for over 10 years and it
is time (really past) to upgrade.
I really don't want to roll my own anymore.? Too much time and too many
skills needed.? Time to retire.? But still want it 'in-house'.
What I am seeing is that many of the packages seem to roll the messages
into some SQL database.? My Dovecot setup uses the
/home/vmail/doman/../{cur,new,etc} tree structure.
Is there any pros vs cons on this that I can read?
Is there some nice packed mailserver I can drop on a Centos-arm server
that has Dovecot under the covers and I can easily rsync my current mail
store to it?
Mail-in-a-box looks interesting.? But I have not figured out its
internals and if I have to worry about anything compiled for arm that is
not part of the distro.
Thanks in advance for help.
* Robert Moskowitz:> What I am seeing is that many of the packages seem to roll the > messages into some SQL database.Do they?> My Dovecot setup uses the /home/vmail/doman/../{cur,new,etc} tree > structure.That's the classic Maildir format. Widely supported, works fine if file system nodes are not a scarce commodity. Dovecot supports other formats (see https://doc.dovecot.org/admin_manual/mailbox_formats/) as well, but I still use Maildir because it is required by Notmuch, which is my software of choice for handling all my mailing list subscriptions. Personally, I would not use a relational database as a mail store unless specifically required by the mail system of your choice. Email is not organised in a way that benefits from a RDB.> Is there some nice packed mailserver I can drop on a Centos-arm server > that has Dovecot under the covers and I can easily rsync my current > mail store to it?As far as migrating content is concerned, you're better off using some form of IMAP synchronisation. This method is not dependent on the underlying mail store format, and it preserves the IMAP flags for your existing messages. -Ralph
On 2/22/2022 9:12 AM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:> What I am seeing is that many of the packages seem to roll the messages > into some SQL database.? My Dovecot setup uses the > /home/vmail/doman/../{cur,new,etc} tree structure.I use dovecot and postfix in conjunction with a postfixadmin database in mysql. The emails are stored on the filesystem using Maildir, not in the database. Configuration and authentication information for domains and users are in the database. Quotas are in the database. I have several gigabytes of email between the many accounts and would not want that stored in a huge database table file. Although I am sure something exists that stores messages in a database with dovecot, I have yet to see it. While a database would probably be more efficient in terms of disk space utilization, it would be much less efficient to make incremental rsync-based backups like I do currently. I use rsync to copy only changes rather than the entire archive, and btrfs snapshots for a history. Thanks, Shawn