Email server Summary/Landscape

[Mark Musone]

For brevity's sake below is a quick summary that tries to simplify
things

Mail Server			POP Server		IMAP Server
Native Format

qmail				qmail-popd		NONE
Maildir
sendmail			uw-popd		uw-imapd
unix mailbox (*)
							courier
Maildir
Cyrus				Cyrus			Cyrus
Proprietary	

(*) Although the native format is unix mailbox, It's easy to change it.


IMHO, if you want to go with Maildir as your format, your probably best
off
going with the following options in order of best-fits:

1. qmail Mailserver and the POP/IMAP server that natively supports
Maildir, meaning qmail and courier.

2. If you don’t want to use qmail, since sendmail is easy to change
formats (using procmail), sendmail+procmail and courier

3. If you don’t want to use courier for the imap server, you can use
sendmail+procmail and uw-imapd patched to use Maildir.


The one thing overall I'd caution is that you currently seem
predetermined to use Maildir. Generally you should determine the
following in order for the end email system:


1. What is the current number of users?
2. What is the email client the users are using
3. What is the average and maximum mailbox size
4. What is the average and maximum mail message size
5. What is the frequency and concurrency of email checking
6. what is the average and maximum number of mail messages per box
7. What is the average number of mail messages in/out per hour
8. What is the average "live" message time (how long do message sit
around till the end user deletes them)

The above answers should determine the mailbox format for you (not the
other way around)
Once you have the mailbox format, then you can go on and choose the best
mail server and access server.

barring all of the above..heh...just pick one and go with it!!! in most
small business to medium business needs, simply anything will work fine.

Good Luck!
-Mark


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nflug at nflug.org [mailto:owner-nflug at nflug.org] On Behalf Of
Robert Meyer
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 9:30 AM
To: nflug at nflug.org
Subject: Re: Maildir

I used the uw patch.  Bad things happen... Outlook kills it in a bad
way.

I've used courier IMAP with Outlook with good success.  It uses the
'maildir'
format.  Courier uses it's own daemon (as opposed to using (x)inetd) and
can be
customized for numbers of allowable connections.

As far as storing maildir format, you can do it in sendmail by using
'procmail'
as your mail delivery agent.  It's a two line config for procmail and
you
specify procmail as your MDA in your sendmail config.  It took me about
20
minutes to research and write the appropriate configs the first time I
did it.

Cheers!

Bob
--- Justin Bennett <justin.bennett at dynabrade.com> wrote:
> I know there has been some discussion about this before, but here
goes. 
> I'm looking for an imap/maildir solution that is easy to maintain. I 
> have systems here and in europe and use Redhat Enterpise with Redhat 
> network to keep them up on updates and security patches. I would like
to 
> do maildir, but all the solutions I seem to find require custom 
> compiling software (qmail) to do this. Anybody have an easier
solution, 
> I know there was talk of a UW patch, I assume you still need qmail
though.
> 
> -- 
> Justin Bennett
> Network Administrator
> RHCE (Redhat Certified Linux Engineer)
> Dynabrade, Inc.
> 8989 Sheridan Dr.
> Clarence, NY 14031
>  
> 
> 


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