[Dovecot] Deleting messages from MailDir

[Bill Cole]

At 7:55 AM +0200 2/13/08, Timo Sirainen wrote:
>On Feb 13, 2008, at 7:21 AM, Benjamin R. Haskell wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 13 Feb 2008, Rody wrote:
>>>Op woensdag 13 februari 2008 00:43, schreef Bill Cole:
>>>>Yes, but you may also care that ctime is reset when a client has
>>>>Dovecot move a message from one subfolder to another within a
>>>>Maildir. I'm not sure why Dovecot does it, but a look at the messages
>>>>in the non-INBOX parts of my Maildir reveals that the ctime is always
>>>>later than the mtime, and the contents (Received headers) makes it
>>>>clear that Dovecot sets the mtime of messages to the original mtime
>>>>(i.e. original delivery time) when copying them.
>>>>
>>
>>I think the answer to "why Dovecot does it" is actually that 
>>Dovecot doesn't do anything with ctime. Under most *nix 
>>filesystems, ctime is the last time the inode underlying the 
>>file/dir was changed ('c' for "changed", not "created" -- 
>>[usually]). The inode gets changed when the file's moved from one 
>>directory to another.
>
>Right. Also there's no way to change ctime even if I wanted to.

Sure, but I was really wondering why you bothered setting mtime into 
the past on copied messages.

[...]
>Also note that if messages are uploaded to server by IMAP client the 
>mtime may be the message's original date. Dovecot uses mtime as the 
>message's IMAP INTERNALDATE.

That answers my question.


-- 
Bill Cole                                  
bill at scconsult.com