[Dovecot] dbox vs. mdbox

[Joan Moreau]

Hi,  

Just giving my own experience: 

* I am using dovecot 2.0.9
(well, now 2.0.10 since today) in production without problems 

* Sdbox
is using far too much I/O on a busy server, I had to switch to mdbox 

*
Mdbox is running well so far, and resources (IO or CPU) are not an issue
anymore. 

* Converting from Maildir to s/mdbox is easy 

* Converting
from sdbox to mdbox has been a complete nightmare. I have never managed
to make it completely, finally made it through imap protocol between 2
instance of dovecot. You better choose before sd or md, but not try to
convert between the 2 

my 2 cents 

JM 

On Fri, 4 Mar 2011 23:19:21
+0200, Timo Sirainen wrote: 

> On 4.3.2011, at 23.05, Douglas Mortensen
wrote:
> 
>> I guess to get more specific, some of the questions I have
regarding dbox vs. mdbox are: 1. What is the advantage to using multiple
files?
> mdbox in theory uses less disk I/O for "normal users". 
> 
>>
2. What is the advantage to using a single sdbox file for each user?
>
It's simpler. More difficult to get corrupted. Also if in future there
exists a filesystem that supports smaller files better, it's then faster
than mdbox. Probably unlikely that it will happen anytime soon. 3.
> 
>>
an of course be anything.
> e="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px
solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">4. Are there real-world benchmarks
showing measurable differences between maildir, sdbox, mdbox? torage, so
the before/after numbers can't be compared. I'm very interested in
knowing myself too.
> e type="cite" style="padding-left:5px;
border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%">5. Are sdbox
& mdbox equally stable to Maildir? Are they recommended for production
systems? sdbox is so simple that I doubt anyone will find any kind of
corruption bugs. mdbox is more complex, but people are using 
> 
>> dles
already corrupted files, v2.0.10 had several fixes related to that.