Re: [Evolution] expunge speed

[Andrew Smith <asmith wpequity com>]

I'm pulling mail from two pop servers (one at work, the other at yahoo)
and letting evolution write my local mail file which I guess by default
is mbox.

So to get a quicker expunge I need to:

1) install & configure fetchmail
2) install & configure qmail
3) convert my mbox to maildir
4) delete existing evo mail accounts
5) create new evo mail account and set as default with maildir source

Phew! That is quite a laundry list for what I would imagine is a pretty
common setup.

-a.

On 17 Aug 2001 14:26:46 -0400, Dan Berger wrote:
> On 17 Aug 2001 10:52:34 -0400, Andrew Smith wrote:
>
> > I'm surprised that you are able to hit expunge after every
> > deletion.
> >
> > Does anyone else watch the paint dry after hitting expunge?
> >
> > The status bar goes on about synchronizing folders, but this takes
> > somewhere on the order of 8-12 seconds no matter how many messages >
> are being expunged.
>
> So, the time taken in expunging a mailbox depends heavily the mailbox
> format.  mbox (still the default, though god knows why) - keeps messages
> in a single, linear, file.  Expunging a message has to re-write the
> *entire file.*  So if the file is large (i.e. you have many messages, or
> a few messages with large attachments), expunge takes a long time.
>
> On the other hand, most IMAP servers don't store their messages in mbox
> format - they either use on of the other standards (maildir, mh) or a
> proprietary one-message-per-file format.  (This is especially important
> on large IMAP servers as it provides the ability to use hard-links to
> deliver a single message to many recipients).  Note that there's nothing
> to prevent you from storing local mail this way - it's just that for
> historical reasons, most mailers default to mbox.
>
> Anyway - you could convert your mailbox to mh or (my preference) maildir
> - I suspect the paint will dry much faster. :)