[Novalug] thinking about switching to maildir

Jay Hart jhart@kevla.org
Tue Apr 3 21:59:56 EDT 2012



>
> On Apr 3, 2012, at 7:02 PM, John Franklin wrote:
>> Now, deleting mail is going to be faster because there's no need to compact
>> the mbox.  However, general reading may create more server load as each file
>> requires its own lookup() and open() and thus a new vnode, putting much more
>> stress on the VFS.
>
>
> One of the issues with Maildir is the need for more inodes than normal as the
> majority of mail messages are very small files.
>
> To help figure out what inode density is appropriate, here are a couple data
> points of my own inboxes:
>
> Median e-mail size: 7.4KB *
> E-mails over 1MB: ~1.5%**
> Emails <= 4KB: ~33%
> Emails <= 8KB: ~57%
> Emails <=16KB: ~74%

How did you determine this???

Jay

>
> Inboxes have the last 3 years of mail in them, plus a few older stragglers.
>
> jf
> * Method: view inboxes unthreaded, sort by size, scroll to roughly the middle.
> ** Based on count of selected email / total e-mails in box. (~11,200 total)
> --
> John Franklin
> franklin@elfie.org
> ICBM: 39º 01' 58.4"N 77º 24' 49.6"W Z+84m
>
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