I HATE Evolution ! Thunderbird ?

Kevin J. Cummings cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
Mon Jun 9 21:53:32 UTC 2008


Rick Stevens wrote:
> I believe mbox would be much slower.  Deleting a thread would force the
> system to search through the entire file to find the messages, delete
> them, then compact the file to close up the space (there'd be a lot of
> fairly big holes in that file).

Compacting only happens if the user chooses to compact the folder, or if 
the user has chosen for the folder to be compacted if it will save a 
certain amount of disk space.  It doesn't happen automatically unless 
configured to.

Furthermore, the actual messages are not deleted, just marked as deleted 
until the folder is compacted.  Even if they are moved to the Trash.
Again, space from messages deleted from the Trash is not recovered until 
the Trash folder is compacted.

> In maildir format, it only has to drop the files containing the threaded
> messages.  The holes in the folder index would be much smaller and
> easier to compact.

Directories don't compress if you have to add inodes and requires more 
directory entries, the system never reclaims them.  You might need that 
many again....  However the disk space from the deleted files becomes 
immediately available.

> I've never compared the two with actual data, but the logic seems sound.
> But then again, I used to eat library paste when I was a kid.  You can't
> go by me.  :-)
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer                       rps2 at nerd.com -
> - Hosting Consulting, Inc.                                           -
> -                                                                    -
> -   Errors have occurred. We won't tell you where or why.  We have   -
> -                         lazy programmers.                          -
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 


-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)




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