3 ms·

What's maildir?

• tedunangst 10y ago
  A directory of mail files.
  • emmelaich 10y ago
    > A directory of mail files. ..which avoids (user level) locking. (to answer the question fully)
    • emmelaich 10y ago
      See also dirq, a queuing system using similar principles, with implementations in Perl, Python and Go.
• djsumdog 10y ago
  Typically a directory in your home directory (~/Maildir on some distributions) which is written to by an MTA like postfix and read using an IMAP daemon like Currier. IIRC, Maildirs became popular with qmail (were they invited by the qmail dev?). Before Mairdir, mail was stored in a single file in the mbox format (typically in /var/spool/mail/<username>). Maildir uses directories and individual files per e-mail, eliminating a lot of the complex locking issues with mbox.