Russell Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> and questions as well. That might be solved by splitting the list
> into "qmail-hard-questions" and "qmail-easy-questions", except that
> anybody who can't figure out the answer to their question thinks it's
> a hard question to answer.
True enough! The question you do not know the answer to is a hard
question.
I agree that people attempting to install and run mail servers should be
fairly technically clued, comfortable with the OS the mail server stuff is
to be installed on, and able to read/understand documentation. In an ideal
world, this would be the case. We do not live in an ideal world.
In the real world, your mail server is crashing every three days, it's on a
non-multitasking OS, on proprietary software. It auths out of a flat text
file. Oh, and 1200 users are going to jump up and down on your corpse if
you don't come up with something pronto.
Linux scares you and you can barely get it installed and to a reasonably
recent patch level. You don't understand users and groups. File
permissions are a mystery. You know a teeny bit of C and nothing about
Perl but you have the llama book. You don't really understand cron, chmod,
chgrp, or adduser. You have JUST figured out how to look at man pages
with different numbers.
All you have is an x86 box, a RedHat CD, and an internet connection. The
x86 isn't spiffy enough to run NT on, and besides, NT mail servers are
expensive. You've seen NT run a web server. You do not wish it to run a
mail server. Your job is to get a new mail server up, running smtp and
POP3, backward-compatible to the old system, and solid...without spending
any money.
Oh, yes. Because you were an idiot the first time around, your nameserver
is the same IP and hostname as your old mailserver (because it was all one
box and MCI only gave you 32 IP addresses and, well, you didn't want to
waste them but that was three years ago and now the piper has presented his
bill) and you'd like the new box on a different IP and hostname yet you do
not wish to reconfigure all the user email clients over the phone.
Also, you're the only employee for the ISP so you have to answer the phone
and do tech support while you're working on this. You don't have a
computer at home and don't know what SSH is anyway, so that isn't an
option.
You can't understand the instructions for sendmail. Everyone you know runs
sendmail, but it's just way too confusing, and you have the sneaking
suspicion that it's insecure. There isn't anyone you know personally who
runs qmail, but it LOOKS a lot simpler and more organized than sendmail.
So you choose qmail.
That's the real world. That was me. I did that, with *much* handholding
and support and patient explanation from those who fought the good fight
and herded an idiot through the basics... for free, without compensation,
step-by-step, patiently explaining the bloody obvious points that had been
asked by legions before me. That was me, fighting the shame of having to
ask someone for help, for being unable to do this simple little thing.
For those who never ever asked "what's a compiler?", for those who never
deleted /dev/null or other relatively important part of the system, for
those who never undertook a project with half-vast clue, for those who
never failed to solve a bloody obvious problem without asking for help --
my hat's off to you. Ya'll are smarter, better folk than I am.
For those who are where I was...Try. Try again. Reread the documentation
at least twice, hopefully three times. Read the FAQ. Remove and reinstall
the software. Do all of the tests that come with the install package.
Read the hints at the bottom of the qmail web page, plus check out the
other web pages referred to therein. Read the man pages for
qmail/tcpserver/whatever. Try again. And again. Restart qmail, just for
giggles. Look at your log files. Check the world wide wunnerful for
anything relevant to your error messages (if any). Have a cup of coffee,
walk around the block, pause for a smoke, anything to not be staring at the
darned thing. Sometimes it helps to take a break. Try again. This is the
world of *n*x, where the race is not only to the swift, but also to the
persistant. If you have exhausted all avenues, then... THEN, ask for help.
Jessica U. Gothie -- admin, bedford.net, Inc.
