[Dovecot] Maildir messages

Wojciech Puchar wojtek at wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl
Fri Jul 13 12:09:56 EEST 2012


> specifically from a filesystem IO perspective:
>
> 1.  new mail delivery

not much difference.
> 2.  searching a mailbox folder

if you do linear search then yes

> 3.  mass deletion of emails from one mailbox folder
>
3 is not true.

> maildir is more IO efficient when reading and deleting individual emails.
>
and making backups.
deleting from maildir means just delete a file, not shuffle data.



Everyone needs to make backups while it is unlinkely that anyone like 
every backup to be effectively full backup.


> mbox puts the load on the mail server application and on memory.

and on I/O too - often quite a bit
> maildir puts the load on the IO subsysetem.  Which is precisely why Timo
> created the mdbox mail storage format, attempting to get the best of
> both worlds.
And this is great idea and actually works :)


mbox may make sense for archive storage. you create archive folder once 
and never modify anything


More information about the dovecot mailing list