[TriLUG] how do I add an email account

[Tanner Lovelace]

Tanner Lovelace wrote:

> Joseph Tate wrote:
> 
>> Cyrus is an alternate IMAP implementation.
>>
>> It's different from UW-IMAP in that:
>> A.   It's configurable without having to recompile
>> B.   It uses maildir instead of Mbox*
> 
> 
> Cyrus does not us maildir.  It also does not use mbox,
> or even the format the trilug uses -- mbx.  It uses
> its own, weird format that has something to do with
> .db files, iirc.  That allows it to easily allow
> public imap folders and imap folder sharing.

Ok, I know it's bad form to reply to your own message,
but I thought a little more explanation was in order.

The Cyrus mailbox format and maildir do have some things
in common.  They both store messages in individual files.
However, this is by no means specific to maildir.  MH
stores each message in a single file and predates the maildir
format.  There are also other formats that use the
file == message semantics.

Maildir not only uses separate files for each message,
but they rename the files to indicate message status.
This means you have to frequently rescan the entire
directory to figure out message status (i.e. if you've
got multiple clients accessing the mailstore). AFAIK,
cyrus does not do this, relying instead on it's various
indices.

There are pro and cons of both the mailbox == 1 file
and message == file school of thoughts.  Ideally the
best result would be to go to a pure database format.
Cyrus is probably the mail server that goes the
furthest down that path without using an actual database.

For a good discussion about mailbox formats and Cyrus
and Maildir vs. UW-IMAP (which TriLUG uses), see
http://www.washington.edu/imap/documentation/formats.txt.html

Cheers,
Tanner