I personally think that it is not until all relevant software is
packaged in a single, well known "distribution", maybe even with some
catchy name, that we can see all services integrated at a level where
advanced options are made available. I could be wrong though!
The way I see it, all the software is already there. You have
daemontools, qpsmtpd, qmail's various components, vpopmail with mysql,
or the ldap version even, maildrop, spamassassin, a slew of really nice
plugins, antivirus plugins, and you even have smtp authentication to
allow customers to send mail through qpsmtpd.
Maybe we should pick up the glove, and create exactly such a
distribution. Its features:
* make it very easy to install - basically type: ./install and that's
it. At most it will ask questions if it can not guess the default values.
* package it into a .deb file (or rpm for our hat wearing fellas)
* make sure all man pages are properly installed & present
* provide some stock configurations for various scenarios, e.g.
large/medium/small setups.
* properly integrated per user/domain configuration, across the board.
* effective against spam, employing spamassassin, pyzor, and various
other plugins
* effective against viruses, again with various plugins
* efficient mail receipt flow by properly prioritizing plugins, etc.
although with the current hook architecture, I think things are mostly ok.
* design it in a way that scales to 2 or more servers (cluster
configuration).
* make it use mysql or ldap, and throw in a web based configuration
system. Sure there is qmailadmin, and vqadmin, and perhaps some other
tools, but they don't really talk to each other, and it's kind of a mess.
I have quite a few linux boxes and I'm willing to dedicate one for the
purpose of research. That is, make a script that cleans up the mess (and
later make it the uninstaller script for the deb package), and a script
that installs all the components from scratch, and then test it again
and again, until we have something worth releasing.
I'm going to start working on this. If anyone cares to join, you'r
welcome ;-)
Skaag
