[Linux-cluster] Re: E-Mail Cluster

[Jan-Frode Myklebust]

On 2006-08-02, Nicholas Anderson <nicholas at fiocruz.br> wrote:
>
> I'm searching in google how to convert from mbox to maildir using 
> sendmail/procmail .... 

At my previous job we changed from exim/uw-imap on mbox, 
to exim/docevot on maildir a couple of years ago. Didn't use
a cluster-fs, only SCSI-based disk failover. For about 500-users.

Right now I'm setting up a similar solution to your... trying
to support up to 200.000 users on a 5 node cluster, using IBM GPFS.

If sendmail is using procmail to do final mailbox-delivery, I 
think the configuration change should be primarily putting a '/' 
at the end of the path, as that should instruct procmail to
do maildir-style delivery. At least that's how I've been doing
it in my ~/.procmailrc. Ref. 'man procmailrc'.

> i have 3000+ users and something like 70GB of 
> emails and  I'll have to test it very well before doing in the 
> production server ....

Sure..  There are a few mbox2maildir converters.. You should probably
try a few of them and verify that they all give the same result.

Another thing to check is that your cluster-fs handles your load
well. My main consern would be how well GFS performs on 
maildir-style folders, as most cluster-fs's I've seen are optimized
for large file streaming I/O. If possible, try to keep a lot of 
file-metadata in cache so that you don't have to go to disk every
time someone check their maildir for new messages.


  -jf