[Mageia-dev] Thunderbird disk storage way up

Fri Apr 22 13:18:35 CEST 2011

In the last week or so, I've noticed my backups have about tripled in 
+size.  Looking into it, the culprit is a 106MB file in the Thunderbird 
+directory called global-messages-db.sqlite.  The Mail directory totals 
+about 118MB, so I'm guessing that the entire Mail repository is being 
+mirrored in a database, probably triggered by my recent use of "Search 
+Messages".
+
+There doesn't seem to be a config option to control this "feature", so 
+I'm guessing it's a build option that just got turned on, if it's an 
+option at all.
+
+If this can be turned off, we may want to consider it.  One of the 
+purposes of the Unix mail file scheme is to isolate frequently-changed 
+folders from seldom-changed folders, so that incremental backups don't 
+pick up the entire mailstore every day (as with systems like Outlook).  
+If Thunderbird is going to replicate the entire mailstore in a database 
+and maintain the database in parallel with the mail folders, this goal 
+goes to hell in a handbasket.
+
+Opinions ?
+