Re: [Sheflug] Change from Maildir Format

[Marcus Hanwell <linux [at] xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2003-10-20 at 16:26, Alan Dawson wrote:

> I've done a little reading on this and it suggests that
> 1.  The actual imapd is probably OK
> 2.  The flat file standard mbox format is giving the problems, being 
> inefficient to sort through and extract messages from.
> 3.  An alternative format mbx is better as it allows (more) random access
> 
> So ..  I'm looking at converting my users e-mail to mbx format. Anybody know 
> how thats done ?

I don't think any mail servers use the mbx format - do you mean maildir
format? I currently use a postfix solution which delivers all mail to
'/home/user/.maildir/'. I don't think sendmail can deliver in maildir
format - one of many reasons for moving to a more secure and modern
server :)

I think qmail created maildir - don't quote me on that though, and that
is the default delivery format for that MTA. I found postfix very easy
to configure and it seems very efficient.

You then probably also need to get hold of another imap server such as
bincIMAP (quite new but supports IMAPdir), or more traditionally
Courier-IMAP - I've used both and prefer binc - I think there is one
more maildir aware IMAP server too, but I don't know.

I have a script which allowed me to convert all my old mbox files to
maildir format too - it worked perfectly. Can't remember the link right
now. I have all this working with mailscanner, spamassassin, procmail
and ClamAV perfectly.

> Also, I think the local sendmail uses procmail to deliver
> 
> Mlocal,         P=/usr/bin/procmail, F=lsDFMAw5:/| [at] qSPfhn09, 
> S=EnvFromL/HdrFromL, R=EnvToL/HdrToL,
> 
> Is the line form sendmail.cf
> 
> What do I need to do to procmail to tell it to deliver in mbx format ?

If you use procmail to deliver you can probably just add a / to the end
of each mailbox name and it will deliver to maildir format - I have that
working here perfectly. I.e. 'SPAM/' as opposed to 'SPAM' as you
probably have now in your recipes for the mailbox names.

Maildir is noticeably faster, especially with a well written IMAP
client. You can probably even keep sendmail if you are using procmail
for all local delivery.

> 
> AED

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