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Re: Why does qmail-pop3d support only Maildir format ?
Satoshi Adachi <adachi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
}Dear Developers and users of qmail:
}
}I am now planing how to replace sendmail by qmail
}on the mail delivery server in our internal secure network
}(inside of our firewall).
}
}Several users at our site prefer to use Macintosh as their base machine
}and want to use popper to communicate with the mail delivery server.
}These users do not know anything about the Maildir format
}but certainly know the mbox format due to the coexistance of
}UNIX workstations and Macintosh's for many years at our site.
}Accordingly, I think that if they were able to start with the mbox format
}after I changed MTA from sendmail to qmail, it would be nice.
I just switched "my" three workstations to qmail last week. For two of
them, it means that qmail rather than sendmail hangs around waiting for the
once a week mail. For the other, there are three users, one an exclusive
Mac user using the Sun as a POPping point, another Linux user using the Sun
over X, and me. I'm very familiar with both Macs and Unix, and get mail to
my Mac using both POP and UUCP (via an MX domain).
If these are exclusve Mac users, why are you worried? Eudora will put
anything it gets together into a mbox, and is completely unconcerned about
how mail is stored on the server. All I did with my Mac user was to set
his .qmail to use Maildir. No problems to report.
For me it's a little more complicated, since I use pine in the office.
pinq is an adequate solution, and I tell Eudora to leave mail on server so
I have everything in one place. The only real problem is that when I use
pinq during the day the mail won't get POP'ed at night (since it's
disappeared from my Maildir), but that's usually what I want anyway. (And
setting up qmail to route mail over uucp was trivial). If your users are
also using Unix software, the worst that will happen to them is that mail
will wind up in an unpoppable mbox on the Unix machine. Transfer it via
ftp, point their client to the file (most of them have a way to do this,
Eudora certainly does) and you're back in business. It's not an ideal
solution, but it will work, and can probably even be automated by someone
familiar with Applescript.
}
}However, the popper daemon packaged in qmail-0.90,
}qmail-pop3d, seems to support only the Maildir format.
}It seems not to support the mbox format.
}
} I would like to know why qmail-pop3d does not support
} the traditional mbox format.
}
}I know that the traditional mbox format has some severe deficiencies,
}since I have read INSTALL.mbox, INSTALL.qsmhook and others.
}
}Finally, which advise do you give me ?
}
} (i) Ask the users of popper at our site
} jump up directly to use the Maildir format from the begining.
}
} (ii) Modify the source code of qmail-pop3d
} to understand the mbox format in addition to the Maildir format.
}
} (iii) Modify the source code of some well-known server for
} POP, e.g. popper-1.831beta, to fit with qmail.
(iii) is probably easiest. All you have to do is point it to the proper
mbox for the user. That's what I would have done if qmail-pop3d had not
worked for us for some reason.
}
}Thank you very much in advance.
}
}Sincerely yours,
}
}Satoshi Adachi
}
}Department of Applied Physics
}Tokyo Institute of Technology
}
}Oookayama 2-12-1, Meguro
}Tokyo 152, JAPAN
--------
Paul J. Schinder
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Code 693
Greenbelt, MD 20770
schinder@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,schinder@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx