Michael Segel <dovecot_mjs@hotmail.com> writes:

Which is preferred? MailDir or Mbox? (directory vs flat file)

Mailbox; I wish I converted when I had the chance. The only benefits I can see with mbox is that it's slightly less complicated, and if you're doing pattern searching or some global mailbox operation, less I/O intensive, but that's a niche case and usually ameliorated by indices.

However, backing up mbox is a pain since changes results in the entire file being backed up for snapshotting filesystems, and atomicity of I/O operations is much harder. It just doesn't scale well for large mailboxes.

As Aki recommends, use something other than mbox unless you got some legacy issue.

How would you do this when migrating from an old server to a new one?

Lots of third party scripts out there that will convert for you. I think you can do dovecot->dovecot dsync to convert.

Joseph Tam <jtam.home@gmail.com>