On Wed, 16 Feb 2000, Paul Lussier wrote:

> >Ya. As much as I hate it, the tradeoff in our current environment isn't
> >really any more desireable.  The one area where we could get rid of it is
> to stop exporting the mail spool, but then all the users would gripe since
> >they'd need to log into the mail server to read mail. No one's gonna like
> >that.
> 
> Well, there is a solution, IMO.  It just has to be "sold" properly.  The 

Now YOU sound like Tony the PHB....

> answer is go 100% POP3/IMAP, and don't export the spool to NFS clients.  If 
> people want to read e-mail through something like emacs or exmh that uses the 
> local spool, you teach them about fetchmail.  That solves a lot of problems 

Yeah I agree, and that solution works great for people like me and you,
but (as much as I hate to admit it) the average user just shouldn't be
expected to learn how to use fetchmail. Your users are there to perform a
particular job function, and learning the ins and outs of e-mail with
tools like procmail and fetchmail isn't it.  The only way I think you
would get buy-in from management and the user community is if the IT
people set it up for each user. Frankly, I don't want to do that. My time
is better spent on rebuilding the DNS server, etc.

> right there!  They no longer have to telnet to a workstation to read their 
> mail if they don't want to, they can check mail from anywhere, they can still 
> use procmail if the want, they can still use whatever mail client they want, 
> etc.

IMAP does present some interesting possibilities though, since it's easy
to use and requires very little configuration. Unix has several clients
that support IMAP, including netscape and pine, for two, and I think I
read somewhere that emacs has it too, but I don't know for sure.

-- 
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"    "Who watches the watchmen?" 
-Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347 

Derek D. Martin      |  Senior UNIX Systems/Network Administrator
Arris Interactive    |  A Nortel Company
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  |  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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