[tpop3d-discuss]Re: tpop3d+Exim with hashed maildir directories

[Dom Gallagher]

At 06:00 AM 5/31/2004, address@hidden wrote:
> What we've done here is assign each user their own unique uid, which most
> other places do as well.  The hashing scheme we used was as follows:
>
> <some base dir>/<last 2 digits of uid>/<2 digits before the last 2 of the 
> uid,0 padded>/uid<uid>/mail/
>
> This is a little hard to understand, so an example is about the only useful
> way of describing the above.
>
> Let's say my uid is 500.  Using the above hashing method, my maildir spool 
> would be at '/var/spool/mail/00/05/uid500/mail/'.  If my uid was 32768, 
> the maildir would be '.../68/27/uid32768/mail/'.  Using some quick math 
> calculations and LPAD in MySQL, this hashing scheme was pretty easy to setup.

That's very cool; it limits the number of hashed directories to 100x100, 
whilst still scaling (and keeping even distribution) as far up as you 
need.  How many users have you tested this with?

> One benefit to using the uid is if someone wants to change their username, 
> they will still be able to retrieve all of their email that was delivered 
> to their old address, without having someone login and move the mail around.

Interesting idea, and a definite advantage.  Are the user ID to 
username/domain mappings kept on the same machine?  If not, how do you deal 
with syncing issues?

D.
--
Dom Gallagher (address@hidden)
Development Engineering
StarNet/MegaPOP - http://www.megapop.net

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