[Dovecot] Virtual users - what is better Maildir or mbox?

[Trever L. Adams]

On 06/26/2012 07:11 AM, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
>> The only draw back I see with maildir is one file per message. This
>
> it is mostly adventage.
Agreed.
>
>> makes it resilient to corruption that mbox sees (if a message gets
>> corrupted, you erase one message and that corruption won't propagate
>> even if you leave it in place). In many setups this also leads to MUCH
>> faster system. On unix systems this doesn't just waste disk space, it
>
> even with 32kB block/4kB fragment filesystem under FreeBSD which is my
> common setup, it isn't that a problem.
> i just checked one of my users folder - 2.3GB in 8500 files. the
> average is 270 kilobytes per mail.
>
> checked few others and it looks similar.
>
>
> dovecot's own storage system can do something in between - packing
> smallest messages by a few in one file.
>
>> could lead to inode (or whatever your *nix of choice calls it)
>> depletion.
> you decide how much inode you need while creating filesystem on every
> unix system, except filesystems where it is allocated on demand.
Yes, as I noted, I haven't seen this. But it could be an annoyance
depending on how things were created and when. I don't believe all file
systems can do allocation on demand. I don't know.
>
> as of latter discussion about what microsoft recommends with linux
> (being of course expert of everything) - i would keep silent.
>
The only reason I know what they recommend is it came up on several
sites that described how to setup the service principals. I read
something recently on Samba lists that explains why this may be their
recommendation. The funny thing is, it really isn't any different than
on their systems unless they think that because it is their system the
keytab is some how miraculously going to stay more secure than it would
on other systems.

Sorry if I seemed like I was claiming to be some super expert. I just
had a lot of help to pull things together. If he was struggling to find
things, I would like to help.

Trever
-- 
"Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons
exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." -- G.K.
Chesterton