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Re: mutt - slow mbox'es



On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 05:31:28AM EDT, Chris Green wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 04:46:24AM -0400, David Yitzchak Cohen wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 04:24:48AM EDT, David Yitzchak Cohen wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 02:33:32AM EDT, Thomas Glanzmann wrote:

> > > > > Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too?
> > > > 
> > > > is it true, that mbx isn't NFS safe?
> > 
> > Another option, of course, is to use a filesystem designed specifically
> > for mail, like IMAP, instead of NFS.  An advantage there is that the IMAP
> 
> Er, surely IMAP isn't a 'filesystem' in the same sense that NFS is,
> IMAP is a specification for accessing mail.

IMAP and NFS are both specifications for accessing "files," and "records"
within those "files."  Whether you call a file a UNIX file or a mailbox is
irrelevent, and whether you call a record a UNIX file block or a message
is irrelevent.  The primary difference between a general filesystem and a
mail filesystem is that a mail filesystem is geared towards mail, rather
than towards general file storage.  However, there's nothing stopping
you from using an IMAP server just like a standard file server, if you
so desire.  (In fact, PINE has a mode where it stores your configuration
file on the IMAP server.)  IMAP was designed to be a marginally capable
general filesystem as well.  (That, of course, is one of the main reasons
why djb hates IMAP ... hehe. . .)

> An IMAP server could run
> on a NFS filesystem (though it might well not be a good idea!).

That argument is bogus, since an NFS server could well run off an IMAP
filesystem (though I can't see why you'd want to code an NFS server
with an IMAP client as the back-end ... remember, when you talk about an
IMAP server running off an NFS back-end, you don't mean the IMAP server
having a built-in NFS client, but rather using the existing NFS mounting
capabilities of the host ... unless you have IMAP mounting capabilities
too (which FUSE will give you, BTW), programs that want to access IMAP
will need their own IMAP client code).

 - Dave

-- 
Uncle Cosmo, why do they call this a word processor?
It's simple, Skyler.  You've seen what food processors do to food, right?

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