David,
You have mentioned a very important point - "Cyrus lacks is a 'pretty interface' for
administration, as Exchange has."
This is one of its best features - why? Because it ensures only people with the
skill and the know how are the system administrators.
To give you a little background about Rutgers, we have 48,000 registered students,
about 6 campuses, 10,000 full-time employees and literally hundreds of servers - all
a mix of Unix, Linux, Novell, NT, and Mac. Currently there are no real standards
about what is allowed and what is not. Every department makes up the rules as they
go. It has been my experience that NT remains the server OS of choice for those who
do not know any better. The ones who do know better run the most stable systems at
the University (Unix, Linux, and Novell.)
Exchange makes it too easy for any novice who knows Windows to "take a shot" and set
up a mail server. It also makes it very easy for anyone (even non-system admins) to
try and fix the system when its broken. And since there are no standards in place
about who is allowed to administer a server, and who is not, you have allot of
department heads, who even though they are not computer people (mostly academic
administrators), have the power to make his / her computer people give up the admin
passwords on the systems. It makes them feel important when they also know what the
password is. The problem here is that in an emergency, they generally figure "Hey,
why don't I just log in and fix the server." You come back from a week's vacation
and find the server was hosed because someone thought they knew what they were
doing...
Command line interfaces are the best. Its like an insurance policy that deters
people who shouldn't be messing around with the system from doing just that. At
least in my opinion; it makes me feel more comfortable.
As a wise man once said - "The most dangerous type of "computer" person is one who
"thinks" they know what they're doing."
-John
"David L. Parsley" wrote:
> Thanks John; I just forwarded a copy of this to my boss, who was a
> little uncomfortable with my using Cyrus to replace Netscape last
> summer. Cyrus has done such a great job, his doubts have diminished
> greatly. Still, this kind of testimonial from IT Directors at other
> institutions is invaluable.
>
> In my bosses opinion, what Cyrus lacks is a 'pretty interface' for
> administration, as Exchange has. While I'm perfectly comfortable with
> current tools, most of my co-workers (boss included) would prefer a nice
> GUI like you find with Microsoft products. To me, this is judging a
> book by it's cover.
>
> Fortunately he _does_ understand the value of open standards, which is
> probably the main reason we're enjoying Cyrus today.
>
> regards,
> David
>
> "John C. Amodeo" wrote:
> >
> > Randall,
> >
> > Paying for software is really not an issue. The University has spent hundreds
> > of thousands of dollars for hundreds of copies of Novell, a site license for
> > McAfee, Oracle, etc.
> >
> > The point here is Cyrus is such a powerful program, with an outstanding track
> > record, that despite the few features it lacks at this point, you couldn't ask
> > for more, in my opinion. In addition, my goal is to see all of the Exchange
> > server go away, and the only way to do that is to prove there is a better
> > system out there and put it to work. Having one that's free makes it that
> > much easier to convince others to switch.
> >
> > Anyway, thanks for your suggestion, I will keep it in the back of my mind.
> >
> > -John
> >
> > "Randall S. Winchester" wrote:
> >
> > > If you do not mind "paying" for a server, Sendmail has a POP/IMAP message
> > > store that is quite similar to the cyrus message store format. It does
> > > support multiple domains, and has a GUI to allow delegated per domain
> > > administration as well.
> > >
> > > Randall
> > >
> > > On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, John C. Amodeo wrote:
> > >
> > > : Greetings,
> > > :
> > > : Let me first start by extending my warmest thanks to everyone who has
> > > : replied to my original message regarding Cyrus capabilities to partition
> > > : into multiple independent mail servers. After reading your suggestions,
> > > : and giving some considerable thought to what would be in our best
> > > : interest, we have decided to run Cyrus on multiple IP aliases. This
> > > : seems to be the most common work around for the the multiple domain
> > > : problem. The one major draw back to using this method is every time
> > > : Cyrus is updated to a new version, multiple copies of the binary will
> > > : need to be compiled all with different parameters (i.e. conf files
> > > : directory, etc.) If you have, lets say, 4 Cyrus servers per physical
> > > : box, and 6 or so imap server, you can see what a nightmare this would be
> > > : every time a new version comes out.
> > > :
> > > : One of my colleagues came up with a suggestion that consists of
> > > : modifying the Cyrus code so we can pass variables to the binary when it
> > > : is invoked. For instance, instead of compiling Cyrus with
> > > : /etc/imap.conf and /etc/cyus.conf hard coded in, we could modify the
> > > : code to accept a variable or two when the master is invoked. This way,
> > > : we can have 1 binary on the server, but invoke 4 masters with different
> > > : parameters (like location of imap.conf and cyrus.conf). I guess this is
> > > : the same concept as the "-s" switch to run imaps, and so on.
> > > :
> > > : Is this possible or am I totally getting out of control? Has anyone
> > > : done this or attempted to do this yet?
> > > :
> > > : When our system is up and functioning well, we plan to write some good
> > > : documentation about ways to integrate Cyrus / Linux into a "business"
> > > : environment that uses Novell and Windows for file sharing and
> > > : application distribution.
> > > :
> > > : -John
> > > : ______________________________________________
> > > : John C. Amodeo, Associate Director
> > > : Information Technology and Computer Operations
> > > : Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Rutgers University
> > > : 732.932.9455-voice 732.932.0013-fax
> > > :
