On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 08:51:56AM +0100, Angel L. Mateo wrote:
> > If you go down this route you will have:
> > 
> >          SMTP                     LMTP
> >      --------------> Postfix --------------> Postfix 2 +
> >                      server 1                courier-imap
> >                      [router]                [mail store]
> > 
>       I tried to make this configuration when we redesign our mail service,
> but I couldn't make it work. I could configure the first postfix to
> resend the mail with LMTP, but I couldn't configure the second to
> receive it.
> 
>       So, finally we have this same configuration but the traffic between the
> two postfixs is with SMTP, not LMTP. We have more than 50000 users and
> we haven't appreciate any problem at all with the configuration,. We two
> load-balanced servers for the SMTP backend and two more for the POP/IMAP
> backend.

SMTP is fine. The advantage of LMTP over SMTP is that it eliminates the
requirement for a queue on the mail store (i.e. "Postfix 2" above). This is
because it allows selective rejection of mail after the body has been
received.

For example, say an incoming message arrives at the mail store with the
following envelope:

  MAIL FROM:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
  RCPT TO:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
  RCPT TO:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
  RCPT TO:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
  DATA
  (message body)
  .

It may be that the mail store is able to deliver the message to user1, has a
temporary error when delivering to user2 which needs to be retried later,
and has a permanent error when delivering to user3.

With SMTP, the mail store can only give a single response after the message
body, so it is forced to accept the mail with a 2XX response code, keep the
message in a local spool queue so that it can retry later for user2, and
generate an outbound bounce message for the failed delivery for user3.

With LTMP, the mail store can generate separate accept/reject response codes
for each recipient. As a result, the sending MTA retains responsibility for
retrying and bouncing; the mail store doesn't need any queue runner daemon,
not does it send any bounces. This gives you one less mail queue to monitor
and manage, and in the case of Cyrus, keeps the code base simple.

Regards,

Brian.


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