Re: Backend writing

[prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc)]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
> prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:
>> Article numbers aren't stored on disk at all; -request-scan creates
>> the mapping anew each time you close and reopen the server, and
>> only keeps it in memory.  Then -request-update-info translates the
>> stored marks into a whole new group info.
> 
> Hm, how are the permanent marks stored?  Doesn't maildir use integers
> as (permanent) article identifiers?

No.  Messages are delivered to separate files; to ensure a delivery
doesn't use the name of an existing message (or interfere with a
concurrent delivery), the filenames include a timestamp, the process
id of the delivering process, and the name of the host where the
delivering process is running.  (See
<URL:http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html>.)  Example:
"996962912.20703.multivac.cwru.edu".  That message is considered to
have the 'tick mark if the file
".nnmaildir/marks/tick/996962912.20703.multivac.cwru.edu" exists in
the maildir.  (See
<URL:http://multivac.cwru.edu./nnmaildir/using/#marks>.)  The cr.yp.to
page describes another way of storing a more limited set of flags;
nnmaildir does not do things that way at present, but for better
interaction with other maildir readers, it might in the future (in
addition to the current way).


paul