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INSTALL.maildir.md (2377B)

      1 This file points out some reasons that you might want to switch from
      2 mbox format to a new format, maildir.
      3 
      4 
      5 1. The trouble with mbox
      6 
      7 The mbox format -- the format of ~user/Mailbox, understood by BSD Mail
      8 and lots of other MUAs -- is inherently unreliable.
      9 
     10 Think about it: what happens if the system crashes while a program is
     11 appending a new message to ~user/Mailbox? The message will be truncated.
     12 Even worse, if it was truncated in the middle of a line, it will end up
     13 being merged with the next message! Sure, the mailer understands that it
     14 wasn't successful, so it'll try delivering the message again later, but
     15 it can't fix your corrupted mbox.
     16 
     17 Other formats, such as mh folders, are just as unreliable.
     18 
     19 qmail supports maildir, a crashproof format for incoming mail messages.
     20 maildir is fast and easy for MUAs to use. Even better, maildir works
     21 wonders over NFS -- see below.
     22 
     23 I don't want to cram maildir down people's throats, so it's not the
     24 default. Nevertheless, I encourage you to start asking for maildir
     25 versions of your favorite MUAs, and to switch over to maildir as soon as
     26 you can.
     27 
     28 
     29 2. Sun's Network Failure System
     30 
     31 Anyone who tells you that mail can be safely delivered in mbox format
     32 over NFS is pulling your leg -- as explained above, mbox format is
     33 inherently unreliable even on a single machine.
     34 
     35 Anyway, NFS is the most unreliable computing environment ever invented,
     36 and qmail doesn't even pretend to support mbox over NFS.
     37 
     38 You should switch to maildir, which works fine over NFS without any
     39 locking. You can safely read your mail over NFS if it's in maildir
     40 format. Any number of machines can deliver mail to you at the same time.
     41 (On the other hand, for efficiency, it's better to get NFS out of the
     42 picture -- your mail should be delivered on the server that contains your
     43 home directory.)
     44 
     45 Here's how to set up qmail to use maildir for your incoming mail:
     46 
     47    ```
     48    % maildirmake $HOME/Maildir
     49    % echo ./Maildir/ > ~/.qmail
     50    ```
     51 
     52 Make sure you include the trailing slash on Maildir/.
     53 
     54 The system administrator can set up Maildir as the default for everybody
     55 by creating a maildir in the new-user template directory and replacing
     56 ./Mailbox with ./Maildir/ in /var/qmail/rc.
     57 
     58 Until your MUA supports maildir, you'll probably want to convert maildir
     59 format to (gaaack) mbox format. I've supplied a maildir2mbox utility
     60 that does the trick.