Re: [Pan-users] Re: Big XML files... (was Re: Re: Better processing of very large groups?)

[Ron Johnson]

On 2009-07-04 21:56, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Sun, 5 Jul 2009 12:43:18 pm Ron Johnson wrote:
> > On 2009-07-04 21:23, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> > > On Sun, 5 Jul 2009 05:23:20 am Ron Johnson wrote:
> > > > On 2009-07-04 13:57, Matej Cepl wrote:
> > > > > Ron Johnson, Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:56:36 -0500:
> > > > > > Also (and maybe because I'm a DBA), this problem just *screams*
> > > > > > for SQLite and a database in the "First Normal Form".
> > > > > After reading http://www.jwz.org/doc/mailsum.html and having
> > > > > still alive experience with Evolution,
> > > > Corrupt that mbox file and *poof*, there goes years of email.  I
> > > > stopped using it years ago as anything but a bzipped archive
> > > > format.
> > > Yes and no ... you've still got the emails, in text format, so I
> > > suppose
> > Not if the write fails in mid-stream.  
>
> Well I suppose that's one failure mode which could lose the entire 
> mailbox.
>
> The only failure I've experienced with mbox was one where either the 
> first two or three, (or possibly the last, it's been a while and I 
> forget) emails in the mailbox got corrupted. I could still see their 
> content when I opened the file in a text editor, but in the mail 
> clients they showed up with blank headers and no body.
>
>
> > Remember the recent kerfuffle 
> > regarding KDE assuming that the way ext3 works is hows every file
> > system works, and thus losing config files on ext4 partitions?
>
> No. Got a link?

http://www.h-online.com/open/Possible-data-loss-in-Ext4--/news/112821

> > > you could write a recovery utility, if one doesn't already exist.
> > > But yes, I agree, maildir is better than mbox because you're likely
> > > to lose no more than one message in the event of corruption. But
> > > keep in mind that when Netscape 2 came out, mbox really was the
> > > standard -- these days I'd say only old dinosaurs use mbox.
> > 90+% of the people using Tbird still use mbox...
>
> Like I said, old dinosaurs.
>
> A few months back, I broke my Kmail config, and decided I'd check out 
> Thunderbird (I haven't used it since it was part of Netscape 3). I gave 
> it a good go, I really did, but it felt like I was being asked to do 
> carpentry with my hands cuffed together and a small monkey riding on my 
> back hitting me with over-ripe bananas.

How so?  I've used Tbird for years, after having used Evolution, 
KMail (back in the KDE 2.x days) and Nutscrape 2.x-4.78.

(But then, I and my family use the IMAP interface.  Years ago, I set 
up postfix/SA/malidrop and fetchmail in cron jobs running every 5-6 
minutes for the 4 users of our LAN.)

> I wouldn't say it is unusable, but I think it's aimed at users whose 
> expectations are lower than mine.
>
> That's not to say that Kmail doesn't have its problems too... all 
> software sucks, it's just that some sucks less than others.
>
>
> > > And at least mbox is a text format, and you have one file per mail
> > > box, and not one giant undocumented binary file for all mail boxes
> > > like Exchange uses.
> > >
> > > *shudders*
> > It's the undocumented part that disturbs me.
>
> If you're worried about mbox corruption losing an entire mail box, you 
> should be worried about Exchange corruption losing every mail box for 
> every user.
>
>
> > I'm also sure that "they" really screwed the pooch when designing
> > the PST file format.  The Outlook XP format, though, does seem to
> > perform better than the older version.
>
> Yeah, but that's not saying much.


--
Scooty Puff, Sr
The Doom-Bringer