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On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 22:17:54 +0100 Rob Beard wrote: > Hi folks, > > I've managed to get Debian 3.1 working as a mail server with Fetchmail, > Procmail and Dovecot. > > At the moment, procmail transfers mail to mbox files in each users home > directory under $HOME/.mail > > So far so good, it appears to be working fine. I was wondering though, > what would be better to use... mbox files (which as far as I can tell > put every mail item bunched together in one file per folder), or into > maildir directories (which from the looks of things on my old SME > server, creates shed loads of files - 1 for each message). > > Just was thinking along the lines of possible hard disk corruption, > backup etc. > > Any suggestions? > > Rob I prefer maildir to mbox, simply because it's what I'm used to. As far as corruption goes, I would have thought that a single mbox file that's accessed for read and read/write actions over and over again would be more prone to corruption than a whole bunch of files in a maildir would be. Also, I would have thought that you'd be more likely to lose a lot of mail during a filesystem recovery if it's all stored in a single file. As for backups... no idea which would prove best. I guess an mbox file would compress better than lots of discreet files, but I wouldn't have thought there'd be too much in it. Grant. -- Unix: Some say the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe. FAQ: www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html