From: Greg A. Woods (no email)
Date: Wed Feb 02 2005 - 16:11:11 EST
[ On Tuesday, February 1, 2005 at 23:30:54 (+0100), Magnus Bäck wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: POP3/IMAP Server Recommendations
>
> On Tuesday, February 01, 2005 at 22:39 CET,
> Sergey Proskurnya <> wrote:
>
> > Yes, I also don't see any advantages of Maildir over Cyrus storage format.
>
> Maildirs can be manipulated with standard tools. For example, I normally
> use mutt to access the maildirs directly but I also have the option of
> using IMAP.
"mutt" != "standard tools"
There is no advantage to trying to access the Cyrus repository as a
collection of mail folders without using IMAP -- indeed there are
possibly even several disadvantages, depending on exactly what you want
to do.
And in fact an administrator can muck around directly in the Cyrus
repository with standard file management tools -- so long as you turn
Cyrus off if you plan to make any changes, and then run the
"reconstruct" after making any changes too of course so that you leave
it in the same consistent state it expects when it starts up again.
There's really nothing magic or hidden about the Cyrus repo format. The
repository is just a collection of files in directories, one message per
file, with the addition of index files, and state management files, for
each folder. On-disk format is IMAP-ready -- i.e. no format conversion
is necessary to spew a message out in an IMAP connection. (IMAP and
SMTP have slightly different requirements for message data format)
However it is best to always use IMAP if at all possible to access a
Cyrus repository.
I suppose one could use the same code Cyrus itself uses, e.g. as a
library, to hook directly into a mail reader, but since the Cyrus repo
has to be owned by a single semi-privileged user, such a modified mailer
would only be usable by an administrator so it would seem to be a major
waste of effort (since an administrator can also access other users
folders via IMAP).
I also wouldn't worry at all about the BDB "drawback" Sergey mentioned.
It really isn't a problem in practice if you read the documentation and
follow the recommendations and procedures outlined for upgrades.
-- Greg A. Woods H:+1 416 218-0098 W:+1 416 489-5852 x122 VE3TCP RoboHack <woods at robohack dot ca> Planix, Inc. <> Secrets of the Weird <woods at weird dot com>
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