Chris Ulrich wrote:
>   If it is possible to reset a user's password in
> exchange, and if exchange truly uses the imap protocol,
> it should be possible to use fetchmail to suck every user's
> email off of the exchange server and into a proper mail
> server. 

It is certainly possible!

>   It's too bad the cyrus server doesn't support maildir.
> I'm not keen on using the u-washington imap server, but
> if I want imap + maildir it is the only option.

Well we decided not to use maildir and use the Cyrus structure ourselves.
Cyrus has various mechansisms for IMAP manipulation on the mailboxes, and
there didn't seem to be much point in reinventing the wheel in that
respect. Running "deliver" from a .qmail file isn't too bad (and I have
the occasional idle thought about adding it directly into qmail-local :-))

>   I've been told by "on high" that I'm going to have to
> support an exchange server for the campus, for both mail
> and schedualing.  I responded that everything I've heard
> about exchange leads me to believe that it will be a disaster,
> to which he responded that large companies (ford and several
> others I don't remember) use exchange so it must be okay.
> How badly does exchange work?  Does it work at all?

We use Exchange on the LAN, and qmail to manage the WAN email
connectivity. We've approached the situation as people can have a mailbox
on the Exchange server or the Cyrus server, and use the Exchange
protocol/IMAP to communicate with them. I use Pine, and have one of my
Inbox folders be my local Exchange inbox. All works okay, though obviously
if you want to take advantage of the "office-environment" then you use
something like Outlook.

I wouldn't say Exchange is wonderful, but it was a business decision and
does the job its aimed at; on the technical front once the comms are
sorted out properly then you can use Exchange/qmail/fetchmail together
quite happily, so I am more tolerant towards it now :-)

(if you are into high-loading for Internet email, let qmail do that as an
intelligent relay, don't try and get Exchange to do everything!)


Chuck

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