[Gllug] Email programs and mbox format

[Huw Lynes]

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 13:13:52 +0000
Sharon Kimble <sharon63 at lineone.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 11:38:59 +0000
> Huw Lynes <huw-l at moving-picture.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 11:26:03 +0000
> > Sharon Kimble <sharon63 at lineone.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > I am currently using Sylpheed-Claws as my main email program and it
> > > is holding a total of 53,682 emails [which I need to keep for
> > > research purposes] in mbox format, although the number is contantly
> > > growing. The only problem is that although I imported one mbox into
> > > SC for each seperate folder, SC then dissected it into lots of
> > > little mboxs which is currently taking up about 6.5gigs of space.
> > > When there is just one mbox for each folder they only take up about
> > > 700mb of space. Quite a difference!
> > > 
> > File space differences will be down to the parameters set on your
> > filesystem. Since there is a minimum amount of disk space that the
> > filesystem can allocate a very large number of very small files can
> > use more disk space. You may be able to tune your filesystem do deal
> > with this more efficiently.
> > 
> > What filesystem are you using?
> > 
> Ext 3 fs. Does this help?

Yes, in that ext3 is probably the worst filesystem for the inefficiency with
which it stores small files. So you have some options.
1) Live with the large amounts of space it's using.
2) Go back to mbox .
3) If you have the space try using a reiser filesystem this is reputedly much
better at storing small files because it uses tail-merging. 
4) Follow Daniel's advice and use something other than a filesystem to store
all these mails given that your mailbox isn't going to be getting smaller.

Hope you are taking regular backups of this mailbox.

-- 
| Huw Lynes               | The Moving Picture Company  |
| System Administrator    | 127 Wardour Street          |
|.........................| London, W1F 0NL             | 


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