Introduction

Physics Computing Services is currently maintaining two parallel mail systems (with many shared components) to allow for the slow migration of older accounts to the newest infrastructure.

In the original system, all incoming mail messages were stored in a single file (aka mbox format) and parsed into messages by the server or the email client at need. These folders are kept in a shared area which makes proper quota management more awkward, slightly reduces access to ones email because it is not directly visible to the user on the apollo user nodes, does not support sub-folders, and has, on occasion triggered performance problems for the servers. (Users occasionally report long startup delays when reading their email.)

The new format, known as Maildir format, keeps every message in a separate file, keeps all of ones email in a special directory in the user home directory, has much more predictable (and generally better) performance characteristics, and also supports sub-folders.

Conversion to the new system is trivial from the server-side, and presents only modest difficulties for the client side.

The process of converting to the Maildir format is described in detail in this document.