[OpenAFS] Failover

Robert Banz banz@umbc.edu
Thu, 29 Dec 2005 23:39:24 -0500


Stephan Wiesand wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Dec 2005, Derek Atkins wrote:
> 
>> You don't want AFS for an imap or maildir backend.  You should just
> 
> 
> Since it's void of any locks, what would be wrong with maildir in AFS?

There's a bunch of things wrong with stock maildir; I've done a lot of 
work with it.  Our site uses a "modified" version of the maildir 
filestructure for mail storage, and it performs quite well over AFS -- 
we've got multiple distributed delivery systems, as well as multiple 
loadbalanced imap/pop readers.

Here's a link to our c-client & procmail patches that we've been using:

http://www.nofocus.org/wordpress/maildir/

and

http://www.umbc.edu/oit/iss/syscore/wiki/Maildir_Mailbox_Format

It's not completely void of locks, though, but since AFS does implement 
file-level locks, it works fine.  (the lock has to do with being able to 
guarantee uniqness of UIDs for messages -- but it's used very sparingly ;) )

-rob