[Dovecot] Question about Dovecot and NFS

[Timo Sirainen]

On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 11:50 -0800, Tony Kay wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> We are using mbox and UW IMAP, and are having issues because UW IMAP does not support multiple client access when you use NFS for the mail files. I've done some research (see the comments after my 2 questions below), and most of the other major IMAP servers simply don't support it (courier is about the only one that has a positive comment). 
> 
> How much testing have you done w/NFS-mounted mail in mbox format? 
> Have you found a reliable way to handle NFS mbox files?

Dovecot allows you to configure how to do locking for mbox files, so if
you're confident enough in your NFS lockd daemon you can just use it.

But I think using dotlocks for reading should work well enough too. Only
problem it causes is that if a client is reading one large mail for a
long time, other clients/connections can't read the mbox at the same
time. Probably doesn't matter much.

Dovecot's indexes currently don't behave perfectly with NFS, so it might
be better idea to store them locally (especially if all IMAP access goes
through one computer). Although I'm going to fix that soon too..