First of all, thanks for the rapid response! I grant that my perceptions of scalability issues might be faulty here. And I've also taken a brief look at Cyrus without getting a clear sense of whether that is best for me. So I think maybe I ought to make a clearer statement of my requirements, and then take your direction about where I should go from here..
What I would like to build is a simple, but scalable, voicemail system that uses IMAP for the message store and meets the following requirements: - Each voicemail subscriber would have an account on the IMAP system - All access to the message storage would be through IMAP only - Messages would be deposited through SMTP only - The server itself will be dedicated to this purpose; i.e no other general purpose computing or user accounts would be on it - Voicemail messages will be stored as attachments to message (base64-encoded wave files) in INBOX - Greetings would be stored as attachments to messages in another mailbox (which means I need a way of getting a message into a mailbox other than INBOX through some automated process) - The server would be provisioned with lots of disk space and lots of users - Since it's voicemail, the number of messages per mailbox is far less than email - Since it's voicemail, the average daily number of accesses per user is far less than email (hence one server would support many more users, I think, as long as sufficient storage is available) - Since it's voicemail, response time to IMAP requests is perhaps a bit more important than email - Incoming IMAP connections will all be from a separate set of servers that I control, which provide the interactive voice response menus and play/record with customers. So it's kind of a locked-down environment, and a bit different set of requirements than pure email messaging. I have previously built such an application on a commercial IMAP product, and while it worked fine, the cost and licensing terms were both prohibitive. Do you think I am on the right track to be considering UW IMAP for this? Or should I take a second look at Cyrus, or even some other product? -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Crispin Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 4:18 PM To: Horton, Dave Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Imap-uw] Don't want a unix user per account - is there an alternate security model For what it's worth, the University of Washington has a six-digit user community for its IMAP service, and many of these users thousands if not tens of thousands of messages in their mailboxes. I am curious why you feel that it "doesn't seem scalable". For each IMAP user, what is needed is: . a user ID . a password . a designated directory to store mailboxes (don't forget, there is more than just INBOX) . access control precluding unauthorized access to other user's mailboxes, and perhaps also sharing access. All this is precisely what a UNIX account provides; and it does so with familiar tools that you already know how to use. There is no "overhead" with a UNIX account that you don't already have to face with IMAP. Without using a UNIX account, you need to have a database of each user with user ID, password, the user's directory (perhaps this can be calculated), and above all access control rules (particularly if shared access is permitted). The main reason for doing this is NOT to save "overhead" over a UNIX account, but rather to do things that UNIX accounts don't do (in particular, provide much more complex access control than UNIX allows). There are excellent servers (notably Cyrus from CMU) which work precisely that way. If you feel that this is what you want, then consider Cyrus: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/ UW imapd is not targeted at that type of audience; Cyrus is. However, the UW and Cyrus folks work closely, so if you are really a Cyrus kind of guy then I'm happy to refer you to them. Good luck! -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. _______________________________________________ Imap-uw mailing list [email protected] https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/imap-uw
