>Ok, I understand that each machine will have it's own hostname, but what I'm
>still not clear on is how IMail will determine what accounts are on let's
>say machine 1 vs. machine 2?
That's the "work" of the peers among themselves, to hunt, with SMTP VRFY,
for the peer that hosts the account.
> Oh wait a minute...it's determined by how many
>users I switch to point to the other box (hostname) by configuring their
>e-mail clients to point to that box right?
no. It's your choice as to which box you create which account, just as if
any one box was not in a peering situ. But that account is not known to
the other Imail servers, and is not accessible from any other server.
If you have ms1.mydomain.com, ms2.mydomain.com, and ms3.mydomain.com in a
peering configuration, then a user, for POP3 and Web messaging access,
needs to know on which specific msX resides his mail account.
The Imail machines don't, each one of them, keep a local list of all the
accounts in the peer group. Each Imail server, each time it receives a
msg for the group, has to hunt down which Imail server is the host of that
account.
>So in reality
what's "reality" have to do with anything, we're talking about computers!! vbg
>...both machines are using the same NT database on our domain that it's
>on, but the accounts that are verified on each machine are based off what
>users have in their e-mail clients in regards to which one their accessing
>for mail...is that
>correct?
The Imail doc about peering doesn't about the situation where the Imail
database is external to Imail, so I can't say for sure what happens there.
My "guess" is that even when Imail uses an external database, it still
keeps a local "trace" of its user accounts so it knows immediately whether
an incoming mail is "acceptable" at the SMTP protocol level, without havin
to look in the database to see if the account exists. This point needs
clarifying here and in the peering section of the Imail manual.
Len
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