Hi Ted. Ted Knab wrote:
> Today, I installed Debian Woody with Exim on a Xeon 700 mhz IBM > Netfinity x250. I find this a very reasonable choice. I have been running Debian since -98 in production mode, and I'm very pleased with it in every aspect. If you want to impress on your friends, just install potato and upgrade to woody without reboot. When I first began to run courier-imap it didn't exist as a debian package, but things has changed for the better since then. > This is going to be a Courier Imap Server for about 2500 users. With lots of RAM and a fast SCSI disk subsystem, no sweat. > If nobody screams at me from this list, I will begin building it this > weekend. Design your directory with care. This is where invested time give big payback in the long run. When it comes to configuration of the services (pop,imap,smtp) this list is a good source of knowledge and experience. Don't be afraid to ask. > Requirements: > > I need to have a directory for email lookups. I highly recommend to go for LDAP. I'm think openldap as distributed in debian woody will be more than sufficient for you. Commercial LDAP solutions is only needed in much bigger installations due to better scalability (performance). > Does Courier have its own native directory lookup service that will work > with both macs and windows clients running Endora? LDAP is the answer. > I would like to keep things as simple as possible in this early stage. A strong advice: virtualize your services from the very beginning. I don't know how many times I have thanked my lucky star that I spent time to make everything virtual, instead of taking the easy road to system file configuration (users, passwords, aliases, forward, vacation, relays, etc). > The second priority is to get webmail working. > Would IMP work with 2500 users or is there a better alternative? I use IMP, but I still looking for a better solution. Next generation of IMP, maybe. A good and bad thing about IMP is that it's a real imap client and therefore talk the imap protocol to the server. That means it doesn't scale as well as a web solution that have direct access to the maildirs. For me, the beauty of using imap in the backend, is that the web client is no different than any other mail client. It gives a more distict boundary between components. > (Unless warned otherwise, both IMP and Courier will be on the same > server to keep things simple. That's how you should start out anyway. No need to overcook it in the beginning. That goes for the ldap server as well, unless you already hosting ldap on another machine. > Eventually, I will have to get Ldap working with Kerberos, and with > Courier Imap for centralized logins. That sounds like a thrilling challenge. I definitely recommend you to use LDAP from the beginning and use it's standard capabilities to centralize your email login from the beginning. Do you mean you have kerberos deployed already for other network services? That would of course be the ultimate final secure authentication solution. Maybe this is what will be adressed next in the open source community. > Am I going in the right direction with Courier Imap or would Cyrus work > better for this ? Cyrus is a good piece of software, but complicated in it's design. Cyrus use a number of metadata files that can get corrupted. In contrast, the concept of maildir in courier-imap is so much more simple and robust. Cyrus is a very sofisticated imap server which suites you if your requirements are abundant. If you want to keep it simple, then courier-imap is your natural choice. Good luck, and don't hesitate to ask for help. Regards, Tomas _______________________________________________ courier-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/courier-users
