On 5 Sep 2001 17:14:09 +0200, jordirfib.upc.es <jordirfib.upc.es> wrote:

> We are using imap implemented by University of Washington.
> I'm going to try your hints.

We were using UW-IMAP here. It sucked. I migrated the company's
mailboxes. One day, then it was done.

a) Performance was bad (it loaded the whole mbox into RAM, and parsed
   it before serving a single mail back to the client!)
   
b) If many users with large mailboxes access their boxes
   simultaneously, the machine would use lots of memory. If the
   machine then starts to swap, performance would deteriorate even more
   
c) Security of UW-IMAP is apalling.

d) http://www.courier-mta.org/mbox-vs-maildir/
   for a benchmark and a comparison to mbox.

e) As a bonus, you can now use POP3/IMAP over SSL/TLS (encrypted)
   No more password sniffing
   
f) MAILDIR is NFS safe, since it requires no locking

g) Your shell users still can use e.g. mutt to read their mail, since
   mutt supports maildir natively.

h) you can authenticate against PAM, so no more /etc/passwd users.

I installed courier-imap, made it use some non-standard ports, then
tested it. After I saw that "everything was fine", I switched to
maildir delivery in Postfix -- new mail would be readable immediately.
Then I used a script to convert all the old mbox files to maildir (by
using mbox2maildir or by simply re-sending the mail to the same
recipient using "formail").

-- 
ralf.hildebrandtinnominate.com                            innominate AG
Technical Consultant                   Don't be afraid of what you see -
Diplom-Informatiker                     be afraid of what you don't see!
tel: +49.(0)7000.POSTFIX                        fax: +49.(0)30.308806-77
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