| Should I use maildir or mbox storage for my user accounts? |
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Maildir is a far superior method to store your user email.
Mbox is the standard UNIX mailbox format in which multiple messages are stored in a single file.
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Maildir is a mailbox format created by Dan Bernstein to address the shortcomings of the mbox format. A maildir mailbox is a directory containing three subdirectories, new, cur, and tmp. Each message in a maildir mailbox is in a separate file in one of the subdirectories, depending upon its status:
1. new is for unread messages
2. cur is for messages that have been seen
3. tmp is for messages in the process of being delivered
One of the benefits of the maildir format is that, even though it doesn't use locking to prevent simultaneous updates from different delivery agents, it's reliable. This means maildir mailboxes can safely reside on NFS-mounted filesystems.
While mbox is more common than maildir and is supported by more MUA's it is still recommended that you use maildir.
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