Re: [Evolution] Evolution maximum email file size

[Internaut at Large <dkap mailhost haven org>]

Greetings,

On Sat, 2008-06-21 at 21:13 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-06-21 at 18:43 -0400, Internaut at Large wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > On Sat, 2008-06-21 at 11:39 -0400, Damon Allen wrote:
> > > In Windows, Outlook is limited to a maximum of 2 GB for email storage 
> > > before problems start occurring.  This is due to a preemptive limit in 
> > > Outlook based on a Windows problem with dealing with large files.  My 
> > > first question is in Linux is there a problem with large files which 
> > > would cause the OS to become unstable?  Secondly does Evolution have a 
> > > limit of email file size based on this OS limit?
> >
> > Interestingly enough, I just ran into this problem.  Not on the
> > Evolution side of things, but on the IMAP side of things.  Apparently my
> > linux server that serves my imap won't handle a mail file that is in
> > excess of, approximately 200 gig. (a little over 30,000 mail messages,
> > some with lots of attachments) when on that system, trying to open the
> > file gives me the error message "cannot handle a file that large of that
> > type" with anything.  So I basically poured it through formail and
> > procmail to filter it to smaller boxes, so it can handle it.
> >
> > Unfortunately, evolution doesn't deal with MH or maildir files very
> > well, so that wasn't really an option, it had to be a large spool file.
>
> I don't understand. What has Evo got to do with the file format on the
> IMAP server?

Because, the version of evolution I'm running (2.10.3, on FC-7) does not
actually remove things from the IMAP server that is completely capable
of MH and Maildir styles of serving, and it was frustrating to use evo
to mark them as deleted, and then have to go in with mutt, local on the
machine, just to expunge them, when they stacked up too much.  I
complained (and filed a bug) about this several years ago, when I first
noticed it (no, I don't remember when) but I just live with it, amongst
the other quirks of Evolution.  (The latest is, for some reason, over
the last several days, the local repository on my computer doesn't seem
to work or resolve, the file portion of the path to the local spool file
seems to not want to exist, and is greyed out when I try to
re-initialize it, at some point, I'll go into the file with an xml
editor, and just add it back in, but ... really, one shouldn't have to
do that.)

> You might want to consider a file-per-message server such as Cyrus,
> Courier or Dovecot. File-per-folder systems are not scaleable. Every
> time you delete and expunge a message from the middle of your 200GB
> file, the server has to copy all 200 gigs.

I know.  But it is what evolution plays well with, unfortunately.  And
yes, I'm using Courier on the server, btw.

-dkap