From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/14947 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: patl@curl.com (Patrick J. LoPresti) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Gnus and the qmail maildir format Date: 08 Apr 1998 15:28:43 -0400 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035154057 19157 80.91.224.250 (20 Oct 2002 22:47:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 22:47:37 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ding@gnus.org Return-Path: Original-Received: from xemacs.org (xemacs.cs.uiuc.edu [128.174.252.16]) by altair.xemacs.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA00866 for ; Wed, 8 Apr 1998 12:30:25 -0700 Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (root@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by xemacs.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA27993 for ; Wed, 8 Apr 1998 14:30:08 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAH16826; Wed, 8 Apr 1998 14:30:20 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Wed, 08 Apr 1998 14:29:32 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from claymore.vcinet.com (claymore.vcinet.com [208.205.12.23]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id OAA16809 for ; Wed, 8 Apr 1998 14:29:23 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: (qmail 30681 invoked by uid 504); 8 Apr 1998 19:29:08 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 30678 invoked from network); 8 Apr 1998 19:29:08 -0000 Original-Received: from softdnserror (HELO egghead.curl.com) (209.49.59.131) by claymore.vcinet.com with SMTP; 8 Apr 1998 19:29:08 -0000 Original-Received: (from patl@localhost) by egghead.curl.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id PAA15171; Wed, 8 Apr 1998 15:29:07 -0400 Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.gnus Original-Lines: 33 X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.2 In-Reply-To: Rich Pieri's message of 31 Mar 1998 10:19:43 -0500 Posted-To: gnu.emacs.gnus Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:14947 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:14947 The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to gnu.emacs.gnus as well. >>>>> "ratinox" == Rich Pieri writes: >>>>> "SK" == Sebastian Kaps writes: SK> I'm wondering why Gnus can't handle mails that are stored in a SK> qmail maildir. ratinox> Because nobody has written a backend to support it. I admit I know little about Gnus backends, but I bet this would be very easy to do. Not only would it be easy, it would provide extremely fast and reliable mail incorporation. A maildir is just a directory full of files with one message per file. A maildir is almost always stored in the user's home directory, which is almost always on the same file system as the user's mail folders. That means incorporation can just be a "rename" operation, which is both fast and immune from mail loss/corruption, even over NFS. Of course, the backend will need to do something sane (i.e., copy) when the rename fails, so some care in coding will be necessary. I suspect it would be much easier for someone familiar with Gnus innards to learn about maildirs than for someone familiar with maildirs (e.g., me) to learn about Gnus innards. A complete description of maildir format is available at: http://www.qmail.org/qmail-manual-html/man5/maildir.html Anyone want to give it a shot? - Pat