[Novalug] thinking about switching to maildir

[John Franklin]

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%

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 at elfie.org
ICBM: 39º 01' 58.4"N 77º 24' 49.6"W Z+84m

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