linuxext3 andvarspoolmail round 2 3562
Jean-David Beyer That's also the case in MA, but until recently there was no easy way to pay any tax you owed. Recently (I forget when), you can report such purchases on...
snip long discussion of the problem
OK, so your sysadmin is finally coming to the same conclusion that others already did (albeit in a totally different manner and from a totally different approach) that having a bunch of large mailbox files in one directory (-var-spool-mail) is the root of the problem. Spreading things around is the solution to that. Why not, as was suggested in the first thread (if I'm remembering the right thread) switch to maildir format? That's a fairly painless switch to make and is certainly a lot easier and more straightforward than what your sysadmin proposed.
Maildir will do three things for you: all of your existing mailbox files will be replaced with subdirectories, so your data will then be spread around that many subdirectories, instead of all in the root. Plus the data in those mailboxes will be broken into individual files per message, eliminating the need to parse gigantic files. Finally, the fragmentation issues should decrease given that you won't be appending to existing files nearly as much; you'll be creating new ones instead, most of the time.
Why all the insistance on sticking with mbox and the resistance to maildir like others suggested in the first place?
Hello, I'm using RHEL AS 3, kernel 2.4.21-27.ELsmp on a Dell Poweredge 700. I've got an external USB2.0 Hard-Drive (Maxtor One Touch...