[Dovecot] Shared Mailboxes, Per User SEEN flag and Mailing lists

[Reikan - Sidney Ferreira]

	Well, here's an example of what I have in mind:

	Suppose a programmers server, each one has Inbox, Outbox, etc. Now, we 
also have the following shared boxes: C/C++, PHP/Perl, HTML/CSS, MySQL, 
PostGreSQL.
	Each user may signup for one or more of this shared boxes, being able 
to mark what they read and what they didn't read.
	The reason, as I said, is to sabe space. Imagine 12000 users, 5 
mailboxes, 2 messages a day, it would be 117MB a day!
	If I understood properly (what I don't think I did), this hardlink 
would be like the file aliases, so, I woul have 1 original message of 
1KB and 12000 aliases to this message, wich wouldn't use much space.
	The main point is that I want make it all web based, so, no 
downloading-and-deleting work, but, syncronizing.

	I hope this help you to help me ^^

Peter Fern wrote:
> If all you need is to deliver a single mail to many users at once, you 
> might consider hardlinking the message into the mailbox - you may lose a 
> little space (never more than one block) as the filename entry in the 
> filesystem will require nominal space, but it's likely to be quite 
> efficient.  Symlinking won't use any additional filespace for each link, 
> but will use inodes... I'm not sure whether dovecot will handle a 
> symlink for an actual mail message though - I would assume not.  In any 
> case, this will only work properly if you are using maildirs, but then 
> if you're not, why not? ;)
> 
> Alternatively, the 1.0 series of dovecot does support shared folders, 
> and I believe per-user flags are supported, though I'd like someone to 
> confirm?  Again, this will only work easily on maildirs due to 
> filesystem permissions and such...
> 
> Reikan - Sidney Ferreira wrote:
> 
>>     Hi!
>>     Im making a small research about IMAP servers and it's features. 
>> As the subject suggests, I want make a shared mailbox, with per user 
>> \seen flag to work like a mailin-list works.
>>     The reason to use 1 shared folder is simple: Imagine 12k users 
>> sending 1KB messages each week, it will be 12+ MB of useless information.
>>     Many people told me that IMAP could do this, but now seem that it 
>> is a little harder then what they made it look like.
>>     Finally, some EXIM users told me that Dovecot could handle it a 
>> little better than Courier, so, Im here to try to find more 
>> information about it.
>>     Follows the mail that I received from an EXIM user.
>>
>>         Sidney
>>
>> Bill Hacker wrote:
>> > Reikan - Sidney Ferreira wrote:
>> >
>> >>     Does Exim works as IMAP?
>> >>     Does it allow public folders?
>> >>     The SEEN control is made by USER or MESSAGE?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> > Exim is an MTA, not an IMAP (or POP) server.
>> >
>> > It works well with most, perhaps all, POP and IMAP servers.
>> >
>> > Two widely-used IMAP partners are courier-IMAP and Dovecot.
>> > Both of these support POP as well as IMAP.
>> > There are several others known to work.
>> >
>> > Folder sharing can be complex.  IMAP is more appropriate than POP, even
>> > if other users are on POP.
>> >
>> > Exim can use Maildir MBox, and other storage types, can use several at
>> > once, can select  the storage location, storage type, UID, GID, and
>> > privilege mask from hard-coded, flat-file, db or RDBMS lookup, and can
>> > create the storage if it does not already exist.
>> >
>> > All/any of the above can be done on a per-user, per-domain or 
>> per-sender
>> > basis, and/or on combinations of the above.
>> >
>> > The rest is up to the IMAP and client configuration(s).
>> >
>> > Dovecot can handle Maildir, MBox and other.  Courier-IMAP is optimized
>> > for Maildirs.
>> >
>> > Message state assignments are the responsibility of the retrieval agent
>> > (IMAP/POP + MUA).
>> > The MTA is not involved once the message has been delivered to storage
>> > 9or distant server).
>> >
>> > As an MTA may process multiple valid messages per valid connection, not
>> > all for the same valid user, or even same destination server, Exim does
>> > routing and delivery in an area that is essentially per-user OR
>> > per-destination sensitive, but always per-message relevant, i.e. -
>> > normally handled one at a time at the 'decision making' points.
>> >
>> > HTH,
>> >
>> > Bill Hacker
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