[plug] Maildir vs mbox

Ben Jensz plug at jensz.id.au
Thu Apr 1 16:03:12 WST 2004


Craig Ringer wrote:

>
>Fair enough. The documentation is somewhere between bad and absent...
>
>  
>
Which is why I never got that far with it and gave up :).

>For direct delivery: 
>  - simplicity
>  - deliveries work even if LMTP delivery agent unreachable
>  - works with even ultra-simple IMAP/pop services, as no special LMTP
>    delivery agent is required.
>  - No need for special mail server config for LMTP delivery
>For LMTP delivery: 
>  - All mail can be owned by the daemon and kept in a separate spool.
>  - MTA doesn't need to understand mail format, only LMTP protocol
>  - IMAP/POP service more easily keep indexes of mailboxes for 
>    faster listing, etc
>  - MTA and IMAP/POP service can be on different machines
>
>  
>

I'm pretty sure Postfix can do delivery via LMTP as well.  But I've 
never touched it.

>There's another issue, too. Ideally you'd want to keep your mail spools
>in a private, non-user-accessible location. This avoids "I cleaned up my
>home folder and now my email is empty" syndrome. 
>
Users can't do anything anyway, as the only thing they login to the 
machine for is retrieving email.  None of them have shell access (not 
that any of them would know what shell access was anyway).

Thanks for the replies :)


/ Ben




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