[Dovecot] seeking advice: dovecot versions; mailbox formats.
Hi,
I'm currently migrating our old (colocated) mail server (running a [terribly outdated, I know] dovecot 1.1.11) to a new VPS (virtual private server). The old server was running gentoo linux (which is mainly the culprit of the old dovecot version: gentoo was too much trouble to keep updating); the new server will run debian (stable: 6).
Debian currently has dovecot 1.2.15 in its repositories; not that much newer... I read in the docs about the auto-generated-from-hg debian dovecot packages for 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2. Which leaves me to the choice what version to use... OK, 2.2 is development, which leaves the choice to: 1.2.15; 2.0.x, or 2.1.x.
I would appreciate any consideration or thoughts on what version to choose.
On a related note, there is the possibility to switch from maildir to dbox. I did not really find much pros or cons, except from performance and standards-compliance (ability to use e.g. mutt on the server itself). Any thoughts?
About the server: we're just a small company. Think about 15 accounts, normal mail traffic, sometimes relatively large attachments (20mb+). Some accounts have many folders; some accounts are very large (5Gb+). Storage is on ext3, raid10. Performance has never been an issue; reliability and ease of maintenance is more important.
Thanks, Vincent Schut.
On 2012-03-08 4:56 AM, Vincent Schut <schut@sarvision.nl> wrote:
The old server was running gentoo linux (which is mainly the culprit of the old dovecot version: gentoo was too much trouble to keep updating);
Please stop with the FUD...
I've been running gentoo for 8+ years, and it is a *breeze* to keep updated, *especially* long term (since it is a 'rolling release' type of distro)...
Yes, it actually does require some minimum amount of attention from the admin, like, say, once per week or once per month updates - buy so should *any* system... and yes, it does require a little more willingness to learn and 'get your hands dirty' (especially for the installation), but it is well worth it.
Oh - and Portage rocks... :)
--
Best regards,
Charles
On 03/08/2012 01:03 PM, Charles Marcus wrote:
On 2012-03-08 4:56 AM, Vincent Schut <schut@sarvision.nl> wrote:
The old server was running gentoo linux (which is mainly the culprit of the old dovecot version: gentoo was too much trouble to keep updating);
Please stop with the FUD...
I've been running gentoo for 8+ years, and it is a *breeze* to keep updated, *especially* long term (since it is a 'rolling release' type of distro)...
Right. I should've known I shouln't mention anyone's favourite distro... :-) Hey, listen, sorry I offended you... its really nothing I have against gentoo, I'm sorry it might have sounded like that. It's just that I appeared not to have the time and energy to do regular updates, and when I tried to update something some months later, I had problems which I had no time and energy to start solving. Thus I decided a rolling distro was no good combination for my server and me. Which is why I will switch to a less rolling distro. That's really all there is to say about. I do still have a rolling distro which-will-not-be-named on my desktop, which I can and do update often and easy.
Yes, it actually does require some minimum amount of attention from the admin, like, say, once per week or once per month updates - buy so should *any* system... and yes, it does require a little more willingness to learn and 'get your hands dirty' (especially for the installation), but it is well worth it.
Yes, I have learned lots from some years with gentoo. No bad feelings. Just bad combo this time.
Oh - and Portage rocks... :)
Well, yes, so does granite. Or iron maiden. Or whatever. As long as you like it :-)
But maybe you also have something useful to say on the questions I *did* ask? About dovecot versions, and/or maildir vs. dbox for example? As the subject said, I was seeking advice, not rant nor war...
Best, Vincent.
On 2012-03-08 8:53 AM, Vincent Schut <schut@sarvision.nl> wrote:
But maybe you also have something useful to say on the questions I *did* ask? About dovecot versions, and/or maildir vs. dbox for example? As the subject said, I was seeking advice, not rant nor war...
Yeah, sorry, and I wasn't offended, I just dislike it when someone says something like that without clarification...
As for version, it is generally recommended for obvious reasons to stay within the confines of your distros package manager unless you are comfortable installing from source. I've never used Debian, so can't speak to which repos you can safely use or the implications if you do...
As for what mailbox format, there is no more 'dbox', it is either sdbox (like mbox one file per folder) or mdbox (multiple files per folder) - that said, mdbox seems to be the best general purpose, but my understanding is it can complicate things if something goes wrong, but it seems to be very solid.
--
Best regards,
Charles
On Thu, Mar 08, 2012 at 11:04:14AM -0500, Charles Marcus wrote:
As for what mailbox format, there is no more 'dbox', it is either sdbox (like mbox one file per folder) or mdbox (multiple files per folder) -
Sdbox is like maildir, one message per file, while mdbox is more like mbox:
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/dboxthat said, mdbox seems to be the best general purpose, but my understanding is it can complicate things if something goes wrong, but it seems to be very solid.
It's a leap of faith to go with dovecot's own format, and no longer be able to use grep and mutt to poke in mail folders directly, but as a serverside storage format it seems like the right way to go.
-jf
On Thu, Mar 09, 2012 at 12:30AM -0500, Jan-Frode Myklebust wrote:
On Thu, Mar 08, 2012 at 11:04:14AM -0500, Charles Marcus wrote:
As for what mailbox format, there is no more 'dbox', it is either sdbox (like mbox one file per folder) or mdbox (multiple files per folder) -
Sdbox is like maildir, one message per file, while mdbox is more like mbox:
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/dbox
Wow, I've no idea how that bit of incorrect data got lodged inside my head.
Thanks Jan-Frode for the correction!
--
Best regards,
Charles
Debian currently has dovecot 1.2.15 in its repositories; not that much newer... I read in the docs about the auto-generated-from-hg debian dovecot packages for 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2. Which leaves me to the choice what version to use... OK, 2.2 is development, which leaves the choice to: 1.2.15; 2.0.x, or 2.1.x.
I would appreciate any consideration or thoughts on what version to choose. On several production machines we are using dovecot from debian testing repos, so 2.0.x. It's working stable for us and is quite easy to maintain. Please be careful and very selectively install packages from testing. If
On 08.03.2012 10:56, Vincent Schut wrote: possible, the package dependences should be installed from stable/security.
-- Adam Szpakowski
participants (5)
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Adam Szpakowski
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Charles Marcus
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Jan-Frode Myklebust
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Micah Anderson
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Vincent Schut