Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Jose Celestino
On Dom, 2010-11-14 at 22:34 -0800, Daniel L. Miller wrote:
 
 You're quite the enabler, Timo!  Now any mail admin who tries to lecture 
 users on only sending attachments to those in-house personnel who really 
 need it, because otherwise it's wasteful of precious server storage 
 space, is going to hear the response, Dude - don't stress out so much - 
 just setup Dovecot with SIS!.
 
 Thanks again!

Hi,

I have to agree that Dovecot promotes bad habits.

For instance we used to have to check cpu usage graphics for our IMAP
servers several times a day with the previous server software, now
sometimes a day passes and we don't check it. At first the operations
dudes would notice our not logging in and call to check if we're sick,
if our fifth grandfather had passed away or if we had hurt both our
hands playing badminton, again, now they just look with a weird
you-lazy-bastard kind of look.

Also we used to be called often because of IMAP problems and we were
always full alert, nowadays we sometimes don't even answer the phone if
we're in the middle of a urban terror game because we're almost sure
that the call is not to report a problem and those nice red team folks
really depend on our headshot skills and the blue team ones on our
grenade throwing disability.

I think Timo should quit the crap and revert some patches to institute
the old and healthy practices!!

-- 
Jose Celestino | http://japc.uncovering.org/files/japc-pgpkey.asc

Assumption is the Mother of Screw-Up -- Mr. John Elwood Hale



Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Stan Hoeppner
Daniel L. Miller put forth on 11/15/2010 12:34 AM:
 Now any mail admin who tries to lecture
 users on only sending attachments to those in-house personnel who really
 need it, because otherwise it's wasteful of precious server storage
 space, is going to hear the response, Dude - don't stress out so much -
 just setup Dovecot with SIS!.

No, the OP won't hear this from end users.  They don't even know what
Dovecot is, will have never heard of it nor SIS.

The only folks he might take grief from is fellow sysadmins.  But why
would they care?

Also, what if at some point management forces you to dump Dovecot and
move to a platform that doesn't offer SIS?  If you change your tune with
said users now, in the future, you may have screwed yourself after
re-educating your users to the SIS way.

-- 
Stan


Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Charles Marcus
On 2010-11-15 1:06 PM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 No, the OP won't hear this from end users.  They don't even know what
 Dovecot is, will have never heard of it nor SIS.
 
 The only folks he might take grief from is fellow sysadmins.  But why
 would they care?

Methinks it was a joke Stan... ;)

 Also, what if at some point management forces you to dump Dovecot and
 move to a platform that doesn't offer SIS?  If you change your tune with
 said users now, in the future, you may have screwed yourself after
 re-educating your users to the SIS way.

The migration should take care of it - each email that has an attachment
that has been SiS'd would then convert to non-SiS'd with no data loss.
Of course you should test it, because you might have some initial
problems if you dramatically under-estimate the storage necessary
*because* of SiS...

-- 

Best regards,

Charles


Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Jerry
On Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:06:40 -0600
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com articulated:

 Daniel L. Miller put forth on 11/15/2010 12:34 AM:
  Now any mail admin who tries to lecture
  users on only sending attachments to those in-house personnel who
  really need it, because otherwise it's wasteful of precious server
  storage space, is going to hear the response, Dude - don't stress
  out so much - just setup Dovecot with SIS!.
 
 No, the OP won't hear this from end users.  They don't even know what
 Dovecot is, will have never heard of it nor SIS.
 
 The only folks he might take grief from is fellow sysadmins.  But why
 would they care?
 
 Also, what if at some point management forces you to dump Dovecot and
 move to a platform that doesn't offer SIS?  If you change your tune
 with said users now, in the future, you may have screwed yourself
 after re-educating your users to the SIS way.

Now that appears to be a rather cavalier attitude to take towards the
OP's end users.

True, at some point management might move to a new platform.
Conversely, they might just shut down the enterprise entirely. Worrying
about what might happen is a fruitless and self defeating venture. The
OP should carefully analyze his present situation. Then weighing the
pros and cons of the various avenues available to him, choose the one
that offers the greatest rewards. Rewards being an all inclusive term.

Es ist nicht die Wirklichkeit, die wichtig ist, sondern wie man Dinge 
wahrnehmen.

-- 
Jerry ✌
dovecot.u...@seibercom.net

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Please do not ignore the Reply-To header.
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Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Stan Hoeppner
Jerry put forth on 11/15/2010 12:47 PM:

 Also, what if at some point management forces you to dump Dovecot and
 move to a platform that doesn't offer SIS?  If you change your tune
 with said users now, in the future, you may have screwed yourself
 after re-educating your users to the SIS way.
 
 Now that appears to be a rather cavalier attitude to take towards the
 OP's end users.

End users hate self contradictory statements made by anyone, especially
the IT department, and especially when they see no tangible benefit of
said change.  They see the change as a pain the their ass, and simply a
benefit to the IT department.  In these situations, the IT dept better
have a manager on staff with some darn good PR skills. :)

-- 
Stan


Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Jerry
On Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:28:03 -0600
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com articulated:

 Jerry put forth on 11/15/2010 12:47 PM:
 
  Also, what if at some point management forces you to dump Dovecot
  and move to a platform that doesn't offer SIS?  If you change your
  tune with said users now, in the future, you may have screwed
  yourself after re-educating your users to the SIS way.
  
  Now that appears to be a rather cavalier attitude to take towards
  the OP's end users.
 
 End users hate self contradictory statements made by anyone,
 especially the IT department, and especially when they see no
 tangible benefit of said change.  They see the change as a pain the
 their ass, and simply a benefit to the IT department.  In these
 situations, the IT dept better have a manager on staff with some darn
 good PR skills. :)

I am not seeing where you got this self contradictory statements
from. Furthermore, a reasonably educate individual does not see
change in the terms of anal discomfort, unless they as conservatives.
A conservative being someone who never envisioned a new concept that
they did not dislike. In any case, this is not a job for the PR
department. Rather, it just requires someone with a set. More
apropos, I believe you are simply blowing this whole thing out of
proportion.

-- 
Jerry ✌
dovecot.u...@seibercom.net

Disclaimer: off-list followups get on-list replies or get ignored.
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Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Stan Hoeppner
Jerry put forth on 11/15/2010 2:26 PM:

 I am not seeing where you got this self contradictory statements
 from. 

Then apparently you didn't read the thread.  The OP told his users long
ago do this.  Then he made a change and told them oh, you don't
really need to do that anymore.  Then, possibly, down the road, he
tells them, oh, now you need to do it the old way again.

Users see that as self contradiction.  Or why can't he make up his mind?

 Furthermore, a reasonably educate individual does not see
 change in the terms of anal discomfort, unless they as conservatives.
 A conservative being someone who never envisioned a new concept that
 they did not dislike. In any case, this is not a job for the PR
 department. Rather, it just requires someone with a set. More
 apropos, I believe you are simply blowing this whole thing out of
 proportion.

I'm blowing nothing out of proportion.  I simply made an observation.  I
don't know about Europe, or anywhere else, but in American cusiness
culture, in general, most users either dislike or outright hate the IT
staff, regardless of the level of education.  In fact, it's the ones who
think they are highly educated who usually hate IT the most, because
they think that given the chance they could do the job better.  This is
because they don't have a clue as to the work that goes on behind the
scenes, and the fact that their requests may never get implemented, or
may take 6 months to go through the IT vetting process before being
approved.  The requirement of calling IT just to get a piece of software
installed on the user's desktop because the user doesn't have rights is
the first thing to turn users against IT.

Now, throw in the original scenario up top, and it's easy to understand
how and why users would resent the best practices policy espoused by the OP.

My original reply to the OP was geared toward saving him grief.  My
recommendation to the OP was to simply say nothing to the users to save
himself potential grief.  That simple.

I believe you are making this into more than it needs to be.  Have you
ever worked in an IT environment with over 1000 users?  And those users
all love the IT staff, baking cookies for them etc?  Send me contact
info PLEASE so I can forward my resume.

-- 
Stan


Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Karsten Bräckelmann
On Mon, 2010-11-15 at 16:27 -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 Then apparently you didn't read the thread.  The OP told his users long
 ago do this.  Then he made a change and told them [...]

No, he did not.

This thread lost its funny long ago. It started off quite amusing, the
first two posts have been humorous (in case you didn't notice), then
Stan entered the thread. Too bad to see a nice thread die that quickly.


-- 
char *t=\10pse\0r\0dtu...@ghno\x4e\xc8\x79\xf4\xab\x51\x8a\x10\xf4\xf4\xc4;
main(){ char h,m=h=*t++,*x=t+2*h,c,i,l=*x,s=0; for (i=0;il;i++){ i%8? c=1:
(c=*++x); c128  (s+=h); if (!(h=1)||!t[s+h]){ putchar(t[s]);h=m;s=0; }}}



Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Charles Marcus
On 2010-11-15 5:27 PM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 The OP told his users long ago do this. Then he made a change and
 told them oh, you don't really need to do that anymore. Then,
 possibly, down the road, he tells them, oh, now you need to do it
 the old way again.

Ummm... no, he didn't. Go back and read the first post.

This is silly... Stan, he (the OP) was *joking*...

 Have you ever worked in an IT environment with over 1000 users?

Nope... just little old me and our 50-75 users (high turnover, so it
fluctuates all the time)...

 And those users all love the IT staff, baking cookies for them etc?

Yep - I get that all the time, and offers to be taken to lunch, and even
money (for the things I do for personal/home computers)...

 Send me contact info PLEASE so I can forward my resume.

You'd be bored to death here and your skills would go to waste... ;)

-- 

Best regards,

Charles


Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Jerry
On Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:27:03 -0600
Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com articulated:

 Jerry put forth on 11/15/2010 2:26 PM:
 
  I am not seeing where you got this self contradictory statements
  from. 
 
 Then apparently you didn't read the thread.  The OP told his users
 long ago do this.  Then he made a change and told them oh, you
 don't really need to do that anymore.  Then, possibly, down the
 road, he tells them, oh, now you need to do it the old way again.
 
 Users see that as self contradiction.  Or why can't he make up his
 mind?
 
  Furthermore, a reasonably educate individual does not see
  change in the terms of anal discomfort, unless they as
  conservatives. A conservative being someone who never envisioned a
  new concept that they did not dislike. In any case, this is not a
  job for the PR department. Rather, it just requires someone with a
  set. More apropos, I believe you are simply blowing this whole
  thing out of proportion.
 
 I'm blowing nothing out of proportion.  I simply made an
 observation.  I don't know about Europe, or anywhere else, but in
 American cusiness culture, in general, most users either dislike or
 outright hate the IT staff, regardless of the level of education.  In
 fact, it's the ones who think they are highly educated who usually
 hate IT the most, because they think that given the chance they could
 do the job better.  This is because they don't have a clue as to the
 work that goes on behind the scenes, and the fact that their
 requests may never get implemented, or may take 6 months to go
 through the IT vetting process before being approved.  The
 requirement of calling IT just to get a piece of software installed
 on the user's desktop because the user doesn't have rights is the
 first thing to turn users against IT.
 
 Now, throw in the original scenario up top, and it's easy to
 understand how and why users would resent the best practices policy
 espoused by the OP.
 
 My original reply to the OP was geared toward saving him grief.  My
 recommendation to the OP was to simply say nothing to the users to
 save himself potential grief.  That simple.
 
 I believe you are making this into more than it needs to be.  Have you
 ever worked in an IT environment with over 1000 users?  And those
 users all love the IT staff, baking cookies for them etc?  Send me
 contact info PLEASE so I can forward my resume.

I have no idea how they do things in Europe either since I live in the
USA. One of my first jobs was maintaining a network for approximately
500 users for a municipality. My first project was installing Postfix
and Courier, since changed to Dovecot to replace a pre-2000 Exchange
box. I would have gladly stayed with Exchange if they would have
allocated the funds. That would have taken too long to get approved so
I just ditched everything and installed the new system over a weekend.
The point being, you do what you have to do.

I spend 25 years as a High School  semi-pro football official. On any
close play, 50% of the players and fans are going to think you are
nuts. You just learn to live with it, aka Grow a set. You cannot
please everyone, so please yourself. If you are going to worry and cry
over whether or not Joe Smoe in accounting is mad at you, then perhaps
it is you who should find a new line of work. I am not here to placate
the company's employees.

-- 
Jerry ✌
dovecot.u...@seibercom.net

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__
The Law of the Perversity of Nature:
You cannot determine beforehand which side of the bread to
butter.


Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Dennis Guhl

Stan Hoeppner schrieb:

[..]


I'm blowing nothing out of proportion.  I simply made an observation.  I


I think you might have, by now, noticed OPs the humour -- so I won't 
stress it.



don't know about Europe, or anywhere else, but in American cusiness
culture, in general, most users either dislike or outright hate the IT


I can't speak for Europe at all but in here in Germany most people like 
thier IT at large.


[..]


I believe you are making this into more than it needs to be.  Have you
ever worked in an IT environment with over 1000 users?  And those users


Yep.


all love the IT staff, baking cookies for them etc?  Send me contact


Yep.


info PLEASE so I can forward my resume.


Nope, the job is taken.

. o O (and Charles might be right, he might be bored to death)

Dennis


Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Stan Hoeppner
Jerry put forth on 11/15/2010 5:00 PM:

 I am not here to placate
 the company's employees.

Whether you think so or not, you indeed are there to meet the needs of
the user base.  A lot of SAs often learn this lesson too late.  Without
users there is no need for your position.  And that fact usually
_doesn't_ cut both ways.  Think about that for a second.

As I said, at many places this isn't an issue.  At others, usually the
large enterprises, IT staff are perennial fodder for the meat grinder,
mainly because personal relationships with users can't be established
simply because of scale.

You never see most of the people who rely on you, yet, they know exactly
who you are when things you are responsible for break.  They _will_ find
you.  If the wrong things break, or break too often, whether it's your
action or lack thereof that causes the breakage, or equipment failure,
etc, it doesn't often matter.  Someone important who relies on that
system can snap a finger and you're gone, often without ever meeting the
person who snapped the fingers, even after 5, 10, 15 years with the
place. :(  It simply matter who in a position of power is having a
really bad day/week/personal life/whatever, and decides to exact some
form of revenge on the world that day, when a failure of _your_ system
causes s/he to go over the edge.  This phenomenon isn't isolated to IT.
 But, for the past 40 years, IT systems have replaced the functions of
huge portions of the office staff functions, so IT is far more exposed
to wrath. :(

-- 
Stan


Re: [Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-15 Thread Stan Hoeppner
Dennis Guhl put forth on 11/15/2010 5:23 PM:

 I think you might have, by now, noticed OPs the humour -- so I won't
 stress it.

I did.  It was weak, but it was there.  If you noticed, I responded to a
specific point within his post, not to the entire post.  I was making a
serious point, regardless of his original intent.  This happens quite
frequently with mailing list topics. :)

-- 
Stan


[Dovecot] Single-instance storage is bad for you!

2010-11-14 Thread Daniel L. Miller
This single-instance storage is going to encourage bad habits!  I just 
found myself preparing an e-mail that needs to be sent to multiple 
recipients - including several within my own organization - yet it's not 
necessary for everyone (in-house) to get the large attachment.  As I was 
getting ready to split the message into two parts for distribution I 
remembered - I can just send it to EVERYBODY in-house and it only 
occupies a single instance - which it would anyway just being in my 
sent folder!  Blasting away...


You're quite the enabler, Timo!  Now any mail admin who tries to lecture 
users on only sending attachments to those in-house personnel who really 
need it, because otherwise it's wasteful of precious server storage 
space, is going to hear the response, Dude - don't stress out so much - 
just setup Dovecot with SIS!.


Thanks again!
--
Daniel