[Novalug] overlay filesystem mechanism to present maildir format differently?

Bryan J Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org
Thu May 28 10:54:19 EDT 2015


On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 10:44 AM, Mark Smith <mark@winksmith.com> wrote:
> it's really not a problem for my setup.  i'm the only one using it and
> incoming email is delivered safely.

I understand, but just wanted to say that NFS is kinda redundant, and
a potential issue, when you have an IMAP service in Dovecot.  I moved
my mail folders away from my home directory long ago.**

  **E.g., mail_location = maildir:/srv/imap/%u/Maildir

I know it's not a concern for you, but I find that leaving them in an
user's home directory, which is also NFS exported, often leads users
searching through them via the NFS mounted filesystem, and then wonder
why performance is so bad (while a search of GBs upon GBs going on).

Alternatively, I have a separate IMAP server, and I don't automount
home directories there, solving the problem without having to change
the directory.

> yeah, i saw imapfs, but as you point out, that's just an interface to
> imap.  not interested in that kind of overhead especially when it's not
> necessary.  i'll just use imap if i wanted that.

I was even re-thinking my comment about migrating using the mount, and
I think there are permissions issues in even doing that.  I wouldn't
know, I've never attempted it.  Hence why I don't recommend using FUSE
mounts in general.

I think the only time I've ever used a FUSE solution, other than for
Gluster (which is, or was, its native solution), is for SSHfs, and
even that's pushing it.

> libfuse-perl seems like it might be a fun thing to try out.
> thanks anyway.

-- bjs



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