Mailbox Formats =============== Mailbox formats supported by Dovecot: * <mbox> [MailboxFormat.mbox.txt]: Traditional UNIX mailbox format. Users' INBOX mboxes are commonly stored in '/var/spool/mail' or '/var/mail' directory. Single file contains multiple messages. * <Maildir> [MailboxFormat.Maildir.txt]: One file contains one message. A reliable choice since files are never modified and all operations are atomic. The top-level 'Maildir' directory contains the 'Maildir/cur', 'Maildir/new' and 'Maildir/tmp' subdirectories. * <dbox> [MailboxFormat.dbox.txt]: Dovecot's own high performance mailbox format. Mails are stored in one or more files, each containing one or more messages. Mailbox formats *not* supported by Dovecot: * <mbx> [MailboxFormat.mbx.txt]: UW-IMAP's old high performance mailbox format. One file contains all the mailboxes, so expunges may still be slow. * mix [MailboxFormat:mix]: UW-IMAP's new (2006) high performance mailbox format. Similar to dbox. * <mailstore> [MailboxFormat.mailstore.txt]: A format created by Exim. * <MH> [MailboxFormat.MH.txt]: One file contains one message. Sort order of the folder determines the message ID and name. Actively used by projects such as MH-E, NMH, exmh. Experimentally supported by UW-IMAP [http://www.washington.edu/imap/]. * <MMDF> [MailboxFormat.MMDF.txt]: Similar to mbox, but instead of From-line separators it uses four '^A' characters * <Cyrus> [MailboxFormat.Cyrus.txt]: One file contains one message, plus there are a couple of index/cache files. Commonly referred to as being maildir-like, although they have only a single thing in common. Adding support for new formats for Dovecot isn't very difficult, although it can be time consuming. Dovecot exposes a nice and simple API which needs to be implemented. Software Support ---------------- +-------------------------------+------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+-------------------------+----------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | *Format/Software* | *dovecot | *UW-IMAP | *Courier-IMAP | *Exim | *Postfix | *PINE | *mutt | *procmail | *maildrop | | | [http://dovecot.org/]* | [http://www.washington.edu/imap/]* | [http://www.courier-mta.org/imap/]* | [http://www.exim.org/]* | [http://www.postfix.org/]* | [http://www.washington.edu/pine/]* | [http://www.mutt.org/]* | [http://www.procmail.org/]* | [http://www.courier-mta.org/maildrop/]* | +-------------------------------+------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+-------------------------+----------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | <mbox> [MailboxFormat.mbox.txt]| Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | +-------------------------------+------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+-------------------------+----------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | <mbx> [MailboxFormat.mbx.txt] | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | +-------------------------------+------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+-------------------------+----------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | <maildir> | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes (3.22) | Yes | | [MailboxFormat.Maildir.txt] | | | | | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+-------------------------+----------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | <mailstore> | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | | [MailboxFormat.mailstore.txt] | | | | | | | | | | +-------------------------------+------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+-------------------------+----------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | <dbox> [MailboxFormat.dbox.txt]| Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | +-------------------------------+------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+-------------------------+----------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | <MH> [MailboxFormat.MH.txt] | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | +-------------------------------+------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+-------------------------+----------------------------+------------------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ Conversion Between Mailbox Formats ---------------------------------- Conversion instructions for converting are in the <Migration.txt> page. References ---------- * Mutt mailbox formats: http://rucus.ru.ac.za/docs/mutt/manual58.html * Article on mailbox formats: http://www.livejournal.com/users/rfunk/1571.html (This file was created from the wiki on 2007-06-15 04:42)
