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Since we are on the topics of email clients. I just started migrating out of the gmail web client, and I think this is a very interesting project. However, I j

by aijony 9y ago

Since we are on the topics of email clients. I just started migrating out of the gmail web client, and I think this is a very interesting project. However, I just started using https://notmuchmail.org/ https://notmuchmail.org/ . It has a C library (and shell, python, haskell etc. bindings) with loads of clients (emacs, vim, web, etc.).

shakna 9y ago
> In order to use Notmuch, you will need to have your email messages stored in your local filesystem, one message per file. One message per file? That's frustrating. Doesn't really matter for ext4 drives, but I still have some ext3 ones, and past 10,000 files in a directory, performance really starts to suck.
- naibafo 9y ago
  Out of interest, is there a reason why? I get not wanting to bother with migrating old drives full of data but I would assume that emails are to be stored on your main system(s) with more current file systems.
  - shakna 9y ago
    ext3 on my work machine. Something I'm not allowed to change. (Hopefully the situation will change somewhere in the next 12 months).
- microcolonel 9y ago
  What kernel are you running? The last kernel to use the ext3 driver to mount ext3 volumes by default is no longer maintained, as far as I'm aware. The ext3 driver was completely removed for 4.3. All kernels since 2.6.28 can mount ext2 with the ext4 driver, and I think all kernels with ext4 support can mount ext3 with the ext4 driver. If you're using the ext4 driver, you can enable the dir_index feature (which I think is what you're looking for) with tune2fs. You can do a proper conversion in a relatively short time, if it's a problem with the on-disk format. Pretty sure that ext4 is mainly just ext3 with journaling and a generally much better implementation.
  - shakna 9y ago
    A change to ext4 would be quite painless, but I'm not allowed to manage the drives on my work machine, which is unfortunate.

by aijony 9y ago

shakna 9y ago

> In order to use Notmuch, you will need to have your email messages stored in your local filesystem, one message per file. One message per file? That's frustrating. Doesn't really matter for ext4 drives, but I still have some ext3 ones, and past 10,000 files in a directory, performance really starts to suck.

naibafo 9y ago
Out of interest, is there a reason why? I get not wanting to bother with migrating old drives full of data but I would assume that emails are to be stored on your main system(s) with more current file systems.
- shakna 9y ago
  ext3 on my work machine. Something I'm not allowed to change. (Hopefully the situation will change somewhere in the next 12 months).
microcolonel 9y ago
What kernel are you running? The last kernel to use the ext3 driver to mount ext3 volumes by default is no longer maintained, as far as I'm aware. The ext3 driver was completely removed for 4.3. All kernels since 2.6.28 can mount ext2 with the ext4 driver, and I think all kernels with ext4 support can mount ext3 with the ext4 driver. If you're using the ext4 driver, you can enable the dir_index feature (which I think is what you're looking for) with tune2fs. You can do a proper conversion in a relatively short time, if it's a problem with the on-disk format. Pretty sure that ext4 is mainly just ext3 with journaling and a generally much better implementation.
- shakna 9y ago
  A change to ext4 would be quite painless, but I'm not allowed to manage the drives on my work machine, which is unfortunate.