Thanks Gordon. Follow up comments as follows:
e-mail aliases:
Yes I know the group aliases are automatic and this is a big +. The aliases
most of my clients require are the usual info, sales, support, webmaster
redirected to the appropriate individual person or group. This is what the
e-smith-aliases-0.3-1.noarch.rpm offered and I was hoping this functionality
could make it into the 4.1 release. I just installed the same rpm (as you
mentioned it would work on 4.1) and it seems to work fine so why not include
this in the release?
tape backup:
Thanks for agreeing to add Taper in the final release! This will of course
require the ability to enable/disable flexbackup as an admin choice.
webmail:
Thanks for reporting the Spell Check issue is being fixed and for checking
into the SENT folder and LDAP issues I mentioned.
PPTP/VPN:
I agree the remote user to site is important and glad to hear you have this
capability coming in this next release. I also have a huge demand for site
to site VPN.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gordon Rowell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2000 11:58 AM
> To: Darrell May
> Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> Subject: Re: [e-smith-devinfo] e-smith 4.1 Beta2
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 27, 2000 at 08:09:14PM -0800, Darrell May
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Here are some comments and suggestions on e-smith 4.1B2
>
> Thanks for the comments.
>
> As everyone is probably aware, we are very busy with work towards
> finalising 4.1 and are trying to satisfy as many requests as is
> possible, but if we keep adding features we will never release 4.1 :-)
> so please take these comments with that in mind.
>
> > e-mail aliases:
> > - There appears to be no e-smith-manager link for creating
> e-mail aliases
> > yet support for the firstname.lastname alias has been
> implemented. There
> > should be functionality similar to what the
> e-smith-aliases-0.3-1.noarch.rpm
> > incorporated.
>
> Many people are not aware of this, but e-smith automatically creates
> aliases to match each group created on the server. So, if you create a
> group "staff" and put some users in the group, you will have an alias
> "staff" which will contain those users. Modifications to the group are
> automatically reflected in the email alias.
>
> We have added the ability to provide a pseudonym for an existing
> account or group, firstname.lastname/firstname_lastname aliases for
> all accounts and an "everyone" alias for all users on the server
> (which is a pseudonym for the "shared" group). These cover the most
> requested "aliases" by our customers, in particular firstname.lastname
> and firstname_lastname.
>
> Creating generalised aliases, including foreign email addresses,
> raises consistency issues, and so we have not added them at this
> stage. It also provides two mechanisms for creating lists of users,
> and we have found that this confuses non-technical people (our target
> market).
>
> One way to add foreign addresses is to make a local user and forward
> their mail off-site. They can then be added to groups (and thus the
> corresponding aliases) and managed in the normal way. User accounts
> are locked by default in 4.1, and so extra users are easily created.
>
> We believe the correct place to store email aliases including foreign
> addresses is in mailing lists, and I have done some initial work on
> supporting ezmlm mailing lists, but it will not make it into 4.1
>
> The e-smith-aliases module should still work, although it does not
> recreate the aliases after an upgrade. This is easily fixed by adding
> a post-upgrade/post-restore event to recreate all aliases. The
> existing contributed module also requires users to enter comma
> separated lists, and this would be the only place in e-smith where
> this is required. We would prefer to fix it properly and include
> mailing list support with archiving, etc.
>
> > tape backup:
> > - flexbackup has been implemented yet there is no
> e-smith-manager link under
> > Backup and Restore for using this.
>
> This is a developer preview. It is not final.
>
> > Imho, I would prefer to see Taper
> > selected and installed over flexbackup as I feel Taper has
> a much better
> > user interface and I believe a more robust command line
> interface as well.
>
> Automation of a taper configuration is significantly more difficult
> than doing the same with flexbackup. We have done some investigation,
> and will do more, but we need to be able to automatically generate the
> configuration from a script.
>
> > To be honest I can't figure out how, using flexbackup, to
> view the files
> > backed up on tape, choose a single file to restore and
> perform the restore.
> > A simple day-to-day request every admin is presented with.
>
> The plans for 4.1 were for nightly, unattended backups of the entire
> machine. Flexbackup may be more complex from the command-line, but
> single file restores are possible - we use flexbackup internally.
>
> > Using a telnet
> > app inside the e-smith-manager (similar to webmin) would be
> a perfect way
> > for handling tape backup using Taper. As a very minimum
> request could the
> > Taper rpm be at least installed via the 4.1 installation
> program. This
> > would provide the option of using Taper to perform
> backup/restore and
> > disaster recovery via a fresh install.
>
> We can easily add taper to the install image and will do so.
>
> > webmail:
> > - spell checker does not function reporting no spelling
> errors even when
> > errors exist
>
> That is a bug and is being fixed.
>
> > - webmail appears to install with only an 'Inbox' folder.
> A 'Sent' folder
> > is needed for storing/reviewing sent messages.
>
> Thanks - we'll check up on that.
>
> > - it would be great if under the 'Contacts' link the LDAP
> Company Directory
> > would have a scroll list showing all LDAP entries from the
> Company Directory
> > or if you entered a wildcard of say * the search result
> would return the
> > same.
>
> This is being looked into.
>
> > PPTP/VPN:
> > - there needs to be more documentation provided to determine how to
> > effectively set up and use this functionality. There is no
> mention of how
> > you could set up e-smith 4.1 to connect two or more offices
> together.
> > One e-smith server to another, to provide seamless VPN
> connectivity for LAN
> > clients.
>
> e-smith 4.1 provides the most commonly requested feature - the ability
> to have staff connect to the server from remote locations. Site to
> site VPNs are for a later version.
>
> > Also encryption and security key information.
>
> Full documentation on the use of PPTP will be in the release
> documentation. There are setup guides on
>
> http://www.moretonbay.com/vpn/pptp.html
> http://www.moretonbay.com/vpn/help.html
>
> However, the documents there don't describe PPTP encryption in
> detail. We now have PPTP working with 128bit encryption with thanks to
> a sterling effort from Charlie over the Christmas "break". We will
> provide details of how to configure the Windows boxen as part of the
> formal documentation.
>
> > SSH:
> > - more information is needed to determine how to
> effectively set up and use
> > this functionality. I admit I'm a Linux newbie but I
> couldn't figure out
> > how to connect and I tried using a few SSH telnet apps.
>
> There were problems with the default configuration of SSH in 4.1-Beta2
> (it defaulted to RSA keys for upgrades). These have been fixed with
> the updates I posted yesterday.
>
> http://www.openssh.org
>
> provides lots of documentation on SSH servers and clients.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Gordon
> --
> Gordon Rowell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.e-smith.org (development)
http://www.e-smith.com (corporate)
Phone: +1 (613) 564 8000 ext. 4378 Fax: +1 (613) 564 7739
e-smith, inc. 1500-150 Metcalfe St, Ottawa, ON K2P 1P1 Canada
