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mmdf(5)                                    User Manuals                                   mmdf(5)

NAME
       MMDF - Multi-channel Memorandum Distribution Facility mailbox format

DESCRIPTION
       This  document  describes  the  MMDF mailbox format used by some MTAs and MUAs (i.e.  sco-
       mail(1)) to store mail messages locally.

       An MMDF mailbox is a text file containing an arbitrary number of  e-mail  messages.   Each
       message  consists  of  a  postmark,  followed  by an e-mail message formatted according to
       RFC822 / RFC2822, followed by a postmark. The file format is line-oriented. Lines are sep-
       arated by line feed characters (ASCII 10). A postmark line consists of the four characters
       "^A^A^A^A" (Control-A; ASCII 1).

       Example of a MMDF mailbox holding two mails:

              ^A^A^A^A
              From: example AT example.com
              To: example AT example.org
              Subject: test

              >From what I learned about the MMDF-format:
              ^A^A^A^A
              ^A^A^A^A
              From: example AT example.com
              To: example AT example.org
              Subject: test 2

              bar
              ^A^A^A^A

       In contrast to most other single file mailbox formats like MBOXO and MBOXRD (see  mbox(5))
       there  is  no  need to quote/dequote "From "-lines in MMDF mailboxes as such lines have no
       special meaning in this format.

       If the modification-time (usually determined via stat(2)) of a nonempty  mailbox  file  is
       greater  than  the  access-time the file has new mail. Many MUAs place a Status: header in
       each message to indicate which messages have already been read.

LOCKING
       Since MMDF files are frequently accessed by multiple  programs  in  parallel,  MMDF  files
       should generally not be accessed without locking.

       Three different locking mechanisms (and combinations thereof) are in general use:

       o      fcntl(2)  locking  is  mostly  used on recent, POSIX-compliant systems. Use of this
              locking method is, in particular, advisable if MMDF files are accessed through  the
              Network  File  System (NFS), since it seems the only way to reliably invalidate NFS
              clients' caches.

       o      flock(2) locking is mostly used on BSD-based systems.

       o      Dotlocking is used on all kinds of systems. In order to lock  an  MMDF  file  named
              folder, an application first creates a temporary file with a unique name in the di-
              rectory in which the folder resides. The application then tries to use the  link(2)
              system call to create a hard link named folder.lock to the temporary file. The suc-
              cess of the link(2) system call  should  be  additionally  verified  using  stat(2)
              calls. If the link has succeeded, the mail folder is considered dotlocked. The tem-
              porary file can then safely be unlinked.

              In order to release the lock, an application just unlinks the folder.lock file.

       If multiple methods are combined, implementors should make sure to  use  the  non-blocking
       variants of the fcntl(2) and flock(2) system calls in order to avoid deadlocks.

       If  multiple  methods  are combined, an MMDF file must not be considered to have been suc-
       cessfully locked before all individual locks were obtained. When  one  of  the  individual
       locking  methods  fails, an application should release all locks it acquired successfully,
       and restart the entire locking procedure from the beginning, after a suitable delay.

       The locking mechanism used on a particular system is a matter of local policy, and  should
       be  consistently used by all applications installed on the system which access MMDF files.
       Failure to do so may result in loss of e-mail data, and in corrupted MMDF files.

CONFORMING TO
       MMDF is not part of any currently supported standard.

HISTORY
       MMDF was developed at the University of Delaware by Dave Crocker.

SEE ALSO
       scomail(1), fcntl(2), flock(2), link(2), stat(2), mbox(5), RFC822, RFC2822

AUTHOR
       Urs Janssen <urs AT tin.org>

Unix                                   February 18th, 2002                                mmdf(5)

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