We split our servers up so that the spamassassin/virus scanning is done by
two servers dedicated to mail scanning. Our mail servers only has imap and
sendmail/procmail running.
We are a unix environment as well. But I've found that for email, most of
our users are confused by the unix .forward files and .vacation files.
They're so used to it now with accessing email via the web that it's
actually easier for me to provide a web script for them to change these
files than for me to devote time answering trouble ticket questions on "how
do i set up forwards?". But I guess it all kind of depends on your
user-base. I mount the mail server directories only on one machine for
people who really want to edit their .forward files rather than use the web
tools.
But, when I install the new uw imap server, I'm probably going to go away
with it altogether. Makes it easier when setting up clusters if the users
don't know what's going on on the backend....
nancy
Brian Thompson wrote:
In what I am talking about, there's no need for a shell environment on
the IMAP servers, at least not for ordinary users. Nobody is going to
run Pine on the IMAP server. The whole point of a dedicated IMAP
server is for it to be IMAP-only. Dedicated servers are more reliable
(less likely to crash) than machines that have to run an unpredictable
mix of tasks.
I guess that's what confuses me... I'm not seeing how a server can simply
be an imap server. The email needs to get onto the server somehow (in
our case sendmail/mail.local). In the delivery process there might be
additional milters in use (in our case Spam Assassin and ClamAV). Then
at the user level there are email related dot files for those who choose to
play with their forwarding (.forward), vacation messaging (.vacation*), or
additional filtering (.procmailrc). We would prefer that all users have
open
shell access in order to personalize their email configuration/make changes
to their dot files if desired.
Part if the advantage to using UW imap over Cyrus for example is that it's
not a black box and plays well with the rest of the software that might or
might not be installed. We're still using pine in traditional unix mode, so
that's what I was thinking when I used pine as an example. Forgot that it
can also be used as an imap client.
-Brian
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