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.
       scomail(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
       separated  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@example.com
              To: example@example.org
              Subject: test

              >From what I learned about the MMDF-format:
              ^A^A^A^A
              ^A^A^A^A
              From: example@example.com
              To: example@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:

       •      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.

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

       If multiple methods are combined, implementers 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
       successfully 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@tin.org>