[Dovecot] alpha4 and zlib-plugin?

[Curtis Maloney]

Jeff A. Earickson wrote:
> Hi,
>   I saw the zlib-plugin reference in the alpha4 ChangeLog
> notes are searched the list for info about it.  The only
> reference I found was from Timo back in March 2005.
> Questions:
> 2) Any plans or ability to make it read/write to a gzipped
> mailbox, or is this possible?  Or will it always be read-only?

The trouble is (especially for a large mbox) it takes a lot of CPU work to 
uncompress and recompress the whole file.  You could make it read/write, but it 
likely wouldn't be worth it.

> 3) How does a mailbox get gzipped?  From within dovecot somehow, or only 
> by external action?

The ideal application of gzip'd mbox is for mailing list archives.  Periodicaly 
(such as end of each month), you rotate your mbox, gzip it (cron job or manually).

Someone on the list (Sorry for forgetting your name!) produced a plugin for 
gzip'd Maildir, which would (in theory, at least) be much easier to read/write, 
but wouldn't get anywhere near the space savings, due to disk block size and 
lack of inter-message context.

--
Curtis Maloney
cmaloney at cardgate.net