I have spent the last good while searching the james-user archives for discussion of this issue and reading the messages I've found. I would like to say the following first:
I understand the limitations of TCP/IP with regard to machines hosting multiple domains. However, since DNS is an application-layer protocol (and thus, our use of domain names is necessarily restricted to the application layer), TCP/IP doesn't get to enter the discussion and it doesn't matter what IP addresses (be it one or many) various domains resolve to. Thus, I insist that there is nothing "virtual" about hosting the mail for multiple domains on a single mail server. Using such terminology leads to a mistaken notion that hosting "virtual" domains in an application is an extra feature, rather than a fundamental necessity of that application, be that application a mail server, web server, or hoojamaboob server (*heh* I really should write a Hoojamaboob protocol just for the name). Having said that, I would appreciate it if someone would explain to me why, exactly, we don't allow for the use of <user>@<domain> as the mailbox identifier. I only got to the middle of last year in the archives before I gave up, so maybe this was discussed recently, or it was discussed earlier and I missed it. The most discussion I found of this was Noel objecting that multiple email addresses might need to feed into a single mailbox. It seems to me that aliasing resolves this problem nicely (i.e. all but one of the addresses which feed into a given mailbox are aliased to the last address). Further, it seems to me a trivial effort to allow a user to specify any of the aliases as his POP3 username, checking provided usernames against SMTP alias lists at login (after all, user administration is already united across messaging protocols on the backend, so there's no reason not to have the POP3 implementation check against the SMTP implementation, if it exists). I've seen a repeated objection that no single solution has presented itself as "the best". I submit that "the best" solution, for now, is the solution that other mail servers use, since it works and is widespread and James continues to lack its own solution to this important problem. Once this solution has been identified (I admit, I have not examined sendmail/qmail/exim/etc to figure out what, precisely, they do, but it involves using the full email address as the mailbox identifier at some level), all that remains is the time required to implement the solution. I am happy to provide the time. I simply want an official solution. The appeal of James, for me, is that I can process inbound and outbound messages synchronously. I despise polling mechanisms, and were I to use any other mail server for the project I am working on, I would have to pop mailboxes to get message data. I am, therefore, keenly interested in helping James become a comprehensive messaging solution. Will someone please decide upon a solution so that I can implement it? I'll decide, if someone will give me the authority. Matthew Schuyler Peck, Hoojamaboobitarian --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
