distributed mailing list? (Was Re: [SunRescue] Question...)

[Joshua D. Boyd]

I'd always assumed that those all php/mysql all the time sites were at
least doing some simple template operations.  That has been one the fields
that I've been someone peeved about for some time.  What if I have a
fairly large site that needs done pretty quickly, but most of the pages
are similar, and server side scripting isn't an option.

Over the years, I've developed a number of small helper tools in a
combination of bash, csh, perl, sed, and python to help with the process.
But, if I was stuck doing a project without access to a unix box, I was
stuck again.  So, I'm not in the process of rewriting all those scripts in
python, and trying to do away with unix dependencies.  I have a working
template system, and a test server (a simple web server written in python
that uses the templates for dynamic testing), and a build tool (builds the
whole site from the templates).  These were the main pieces.  I'm now
trying to create a simple text editor in python/wxpython to tie all the
pieces together.  I'm nearly done the text editor integration, at least to
the point that I can use it for real work.  After I get the working, I
might bundle it for a public release.

>From there, I still have numerous unix tools that I don't yet have a good
replacement for.  I only do simple global find and replace regex stuff in
sed, so re implementing those scripts in the new python environment will
be easy.  I haven't found a good replacement for ispell though.  Looking
towards the future, I'm thinking of adding some wiki-ish formatting
features, like being able to use double crs instead of having to bother
including <p></p> tags, and being able to do | | instead of <i></i>, and
some better link management and email address mangement tools.

Anyway, getting back to the topic of mail servers.  The problem with
flat files is that they can be a pain.  Now, if the server ran reiserfs,
we could just place each and every email as a text file.  We also could
look at using berkelydb, but I suspect that for large mail servers, that
could be problematic, and I'm not really a big fan of berkelydb.  

Even if a single table sql database isn't the most appropriate, it is so
stinking easy to implement.  With a flatfile (the way mail is usually
stored), you have to figure out how to keep track of how messages are
seperated.  You could try to reuse code from an existing mail program, but
it isn't always ideal, and might have hidden gotchas, and if it doesn't,
it would still be a complex task to seperate out. 

Now, BeOS could be real interesting to use here, but it craps out after a
few thousand files in a directory.  It's indexing system has flaws.

I wonder how AtheOS's file system is.  They designed it in part after BFS,
but I haven't seen if they adopted the OO features.


--
Joshua Boyd

On Fri, 25 May 2001, Dan Debertin wrote:

> On Fri, 25 May 2001, Tugrul Galatali wrote:
> 
> > 	One of those things I've wanted to do but never got the energy to do
> > when I was jobless was write a mail server. Clustering seemed like something
> > fun to implement :) I also had this crazy idea to throw everything into a SQL
> > server, since there is no point in reinventing a system of storing massive
> > quantities of data ;)
> 
> Noooooo! *screams and gasps for breath*
> 
> That's exactly what mail needs, is one more point of failure.
> 
> Why add a database server into the mix when files do just fine? Flat files
> are quite good at storing and organizing non-interrelated data, like mail.
> If you (needlessly, IMHO) put it into a database, it is *you* who are
> "reinventing a system of storing massive quantities of data". The
> filesystem does this just fine.
> 
> <aside>
> It's like those people with all-php/mysql, all-the-time webpages, where
> the *entire page* is stored in a database, and the index just executes a
> SELECT. What's the bleddy point? You just turned mysqld into an incredibly
> slow, non-redundant remote filesystem!
> </aside>
> 
> Databases are great when applied to things that benefit from it. Mail is
> not one of those things.
> 
> 
> Dan
> --
> Dan Debertin
> airboss at nodewarrior.org
> www.nodewarrior.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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