Re: [swinog] Mail server - Unix

2006-12-24 Diskussionsfäden Kirill Ponazdyr
Nico,

For domain toaster of that size, qmail-ldap is a nice solution, but
software seems to be orphaned now, as soon as some major SMTP enhancements
come in I am afraid qmail will slowly die out.

As some have already mentioned, the Maildir format used by Qmail is
suboptimal for handling large boxes, expecially with IMAP, I would
strongly advise to use IMAP daemon which features caching mechanisms, such
as Cyrus IMAP. Cyrus is great plus you get Sieve server side filtering but
it is a challenge to get it working with Qmail, especially with virtual
boxes.

If you go with some non-caching IMAP daemon like courier, then it might
make sence to setup IMAP Proxy too which would keep alife the IMAP
connections for let`s say 2 min and reuse it for same user, so new IMAP
processes do not have to be spawned and mailboxes rescanned every time web
mail refreshes. Of course this hogs memory but is useful sometimes,
especially if users have thousands of mails.

Frontend: Squirrelmail. By far most powerful web based MUA out there IMHO.
Also very easy to ehnance, we wrote a LDAP control panel to it for
example, so users can setup aliases, forwarders and away messages
themselves. (Contact me offlist if you want it, I can send it to you).

Cheers

Kirill

-- 
Kirill Ponazdyr
Technical Director
Codeangels Solutions GmbH
Tel: +41 (0)43 844 90 10
Fax: +41 (0)43 844 90 12
http://www.codeangels.ch
http://www.codeangels.com

> Hello!
>
> Just wanted to ask what setup you use or recommend for large
> scale sites (~10k users, some hundreds of imap(s), smtp, webmail
> connections, about 5-10 mails incoming and outgoing per second):
>
> - what smtpd? why?
> - what mail retrieval solution for which protocol?
> - if you offer webmail, what do you use?
> - it should be *nix software, preferable FOSS (free and open source
>   software)
> - Which Antispam / Antivirus "protection" do you use?
>   And what is the success rate?
>
> I'm personally deep into qmail+patches+patches+patches of patches
> plus courier and dovecot.
>
> The problem with qmail is that you need either a big patchset or
> a once patched setup and reuse that. Plus qmail really has
> some not-so-nice bugs.
>
> On the other hand, there seems to be no MTA out there, that can be
> configured so easy like qmail (ever created a mail addr with
> "cp .qmail-template .qmail-domain-user" with another MTA?).
>
> Oh, btw, "froehliche Weihnachten"
>
> Nico
>
> --
> ``...if there's one thing about Linux users, they're do-ers, not
> whiners.''
> (A quotation of Andy Patrizio I completely agree with)
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>

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Re: [swinog] Mail server - Unix

2006-12-24 Diskussionsfäden Jeroen Massar
Nico -telmich- Schottelius wrote:
> Jeroen Massar [Sun, Dec 24, 2006 at 02:18:18PM +]:
>> That all depends on what you are used to.
>>
>> The mini-isp setup:
>>  - Debian unstable
> 
> unstable? for production system?

Yes, why not? Unstable == newest of the newest. The only thing that can
break is when you upgrade packages, thus only upgrade when you need to.
Aka install debsecan and only upgrade for security issues. I only had 1
minor problem with it this year and that was an libattr upgrade which
broke ls ;)

>>  - nsd or pdns as authoritive dns
>>  - pdns as a recursing dns
> 
> dns was not really questioned, but I would prefer djbdns
> (+patches, again) or bind.

Patches, patches, patches. Bind9 is fine (and actually what I usually
use) but pdns&nds are simply faster, thus for scalability I would go for
those, then again it depends on ones needs.

>>  - postfix for SMTP + optional STARTTLS + Submission
> 
> Submission does what task?

Port 587. SMTP Message Submission - http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2476.txt

The way that your users send mail to the rest of the world. Just in
case, they are not supposed to use port 25, that is for server<->server
message transfers. This also allows you to easily redirect port 25
outbound to a greylister/ratelimit if you want as they should never be
using it. Of course that should be an option that one can easily turn
of, some people love to run their own SMTP too ;)

>>  - amavis + clamav & Spamassassin using milter inline in postfix
> 
> Seem both to be just 'the standard antivir and antispam' solution

There is afaik nothing better, especially in combo with:

>>  - http://saupdates.openprotect.com/ to update SA.
> 
> nice, did not know that.

That thing ;) Which is indeed pretty sweet.

>>  - dovecot for IMAP-SSL
> 
> yep, sounds for me as the best solution. I remember having
> some problems with courier and performance with Maildirs
>> = 100k Mails (my inbox).

Well cras (ehm Timo Sirainen ;) is simply an extremely talented and good
coder thus I definitely trust his stuff.

>> To make it all configureable one can go for a MySQL backend or write
>> scripts which can generate the configs. MySQL (or other SQL backend) is
>> prolly the way to go though.
> 
> Don't know whether I really like the idea being dependent of MySQL
> as backend, but it is at least one possibility to do central
> administration.

Otherwise go for postgresql if you want a technically better DB. LDAP is
always also an option but it doesn't provide the flexibility that SQL
gives, especially for storing all kinds of unrelated data. Having
everything (including accounting etc) in the same database with one
single data model makes management a lot easier and one can also do
weird queries and do statistics making $management happy.

>> Yet again, it all depends on what you need and what you are used to...
> 
> Well, it does not really depend on what I am used to for me (anymore).
> 
> I am currently really thinking of giving postfix a try, but it somehow
> "feels" like stepping backwards.

postfix is IMHO at the moment the best MTA there is.

> I am really interested in some experiences of postfix admins and how
> they handle virtual domains and users.

"vi /etc/postfix/virtual/" but you can stick *all* of that in SQL.

There are loads of HOWTO's on how to do it:
http://wiki.dovecot.org/DovecotLDAPostfixAdminMySQL
http://www.howtoforge.com/virtual_postfix_mysql_quota_courier

Cool thing about Dovecot&Postfix btw:
http://www.postfix.org/SASL_README.html#server_dovecot
Aka you can let dovecot authenticate SMTP AUTH for submission

Or if you really want the truly virtual and complete doc:
http://postfix.pentachron.net/ :)

Happy playing over X-mas with all the new toys everybody is getting :)

Greets,
 Jeroen



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Re: [swinog] Mail server - Unix

2006-12-24 Diskussionsfäden Stanislav Sinyagin
> I am currently really thinking of giving postfix a try, but it somehow
> "feels" like stepping backwards.
> 
> I am really interested in some experiences of postfix admins and how
> they handle virtual domains and users.

Postfix is great, efficient and easy to use. Also there are 
lots of plugins developed for it. For 10k mailboxes it will run smoothly.
Back in 1998, we had a postfix server running more than 50k accounts on 
an old Sun Ultra server, and it was not causing much trouble. Well, the users
were of course mostly dialup ones, and spammers weren't that active that
time...

Comparing to qmail, I'd advice to go for postfix. 


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Re: [swinog] Mail server - Unix

2006-12-24 Diskussionsfäden Nico -telmich- Schottelius
Jeroen Massar [Sun, Dec 24, 2006 at 02:18:18PM +]:
> That all depends on what you are used to.
> 
> The mini-isp setup:
>  - Debian unstable

unstable? for production system?

>  - nsd or pdns as authoritive dns
>  - pdns as a recursing dns

dns was not really questioned, but I would prefer djbdns
(+patches, again) or bind.

>  - postfix for SMTP + optional STARTTLS + Submission

Submission does what task?

>  - amavis + clamav & Spamassassin using milter inline in postfix

Seem both to be just 'the standard antivir and antispam' solution

>  - http://saupdates.openprotect.com/ to update SA.

nice, did not know that.

>  - dovecot for IMAP-SSL

yep, sounds for me as the best solution. I remember having
some problems with courier and performance with Maildirs
>= 100k Mails (my inbox).

>  - squirrelmail or Horde IMP as a webmail frontend
>or when living on the alpha side: hula (hula-project.org)

Will have a look at hula; squirrel and horde are also both
quite 'standard' in their area.

> To make it all configureable one can go for a MySQL backend or write
> scripts which can generate the configs. MySQL (or other SQL backend) is
> prolly the way to go though.

Don't know whether I really like the idea being dependent of MySQL
as backend, but it is at least one possibility to do central
administration.

> Yet again, it all depends on what you need and what you are used to...

Well, it does not really depend on what I am used to for me (anymore).

I am currently really thinking of giving postfix a try, but it somehow
"feels" like stepping backwards.

I am really interested in some experiences of postfix admins and how
they handle virtual domains and users.

Nico

-- 
``...if there's one thing about Linux users, they're do-ers, not whiners.''
(A quotation of Andy Patrizio I completely agree with)


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Re: [swinog] Mail server - Unix

2006-12-24 Diskussionsfäden Stanislav Sinyagin
we've been operating ISPMan+openldap+postfix+Cyrus+horde, but then moved 
our services to Plesk. 
Having looked back, I'd still go again with Plesk. It saves a lot of time,
and normally a sysadmin's working time is more expensive than the software 
license.

It has its limitations and unconveniences, but in general it's a great product.

A strong advice is to put a greylisting server in front of it on a separate 
machine (might be a virtual machine).

Besides, I studied together in the same University 
with Sw-Soft's core team ;-)

regards,
stan


--- Nico -telmich- Schottelius <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hello!
> 
> Just wanted to ask what setup you use or recommend for large
> scale sites (~10k users, some hundreds of imap(s), smtp, webmail
> connections, about 5-10 mails incoming and outgoing per second):

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Re: [swinog] Mail server - Unix

2006-12-24 Diskussionsfäden Matthias Blaser
On Sunday 24 December 2006 15:01, Nico -telmich- Schottelius wrote:
> I'm personally deep into qmail+patches+patches+patches of patches
> plus courier and dovecot.
>
> The problem with qmail is that you need either a big patchset or
> a once patched setup and reuse that. Plus qmail really has
> some not-so-nice bugs.

We use a qmail-ldap [1] setup (qmail + single patchset) for years with a 
similar workload and it works quite fine. However as you already said, there 
are some annoyances with qmail which are not that nice... one of the biggest 
drawbacks is that it's not actively maintained anymore and you have to either 
use alternative components if you need a new specific feature (like smtp 
daemon with support for filtering, greylisting or whatever) or manually 
adjust patches because usually the different patches are not interoperable. 
However, many annoyances are already addressed in the qmail-ldap patchset and 
because qmail is modular it's not a big deal to replace parts which you don't 
like.

What you have to consider when using qmail is that the disk i/o performance is 
far more critical than for other MTA's - fast disks are a must, at least for 
the queue partition.

Regards,
Matthias

[1] http://www.qmail-ldap.org/
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Re: [swinog] Mail server - Unix

2006-12-24 Diskussionsfäden Jeroen Massar
Nico -telmich- Schottelius wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> Just wanted to ask what setup you use or recommend for large
> scale sites (~10k users, some hundreds of imap(s), smtp, webmail
> connections, about 5-10 mails incoming and outgoing per second):
> 
> - what smtpd? why?
> - what mail retrieval solution for which protocol?
> - if you offer webmail, what do you use?
> - it should be *nix software, preferable FOSS (free and open source
>   software)
> - Which Antispam / Antivirus "protection" do you use?
>   And what is the success rate?
> 
> I'm personally deep into qmail+patches+patches+patches of patches
> plus courier and dovecot.
> 
> The problem with qmail is that you need either a big patchset or
> a once patched setup and reuse that. Plus qmail really has
> some not-so-nice bugs.
> 
> On the other hand, there seems to be no MTA out there, that can be
> configured so easy like qmail (ever created a mail addr with
> "cp .qmail-template .qmail-domain-user" with another MTA?).

That all depends on what you are used to.

The mini-isp setup:
 - Debian unstable
 - nsd or pdns as authoritive dns
 - pdns as a recursing dns
 - postfix for SMTP + optional STARTTLS + Submission
 - amavis + clamav & Spamassassin using milter inline in postfix
 - http://saupdates.openprotect.com/ to update SA.
 - dovecot for IMAP-SSL
 - squirrelmail or Horde IMP as a webmail frontend
   or when living on the alpha side: hula (hula-project.org)

To make it all configureable one can go for a MySQL backend or write
scripts which can generate the configs. MySQL (or other SQL backend) is
prolly the way to go though.

Yet again, it all depends on what you need and what you are used to...

Greets,
 Jeroen



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[swinog] Mail server - Unix

2006-12-24 Diskussionsfäden Nico -telmich- Schottelius
Hello!

Just wanted to ask what setup you use or recommend for large
scale sites (~10k users, some hundreds of imap(s), smtp, webmail
connections, about 5-10 mails incoming and outgoing per second):

- what smtpd? why?
- what mail retrieval solution for which protocol?
- if you offer webmail, what do you use?
- it should be *nix software, preferable FOSS (free and open source
  software)
- Which Antispam / Antivirus "protection" do you use?
  And what is the success rate?

I'm personally deep into qmail+patches+patches+patches of patches
plus courier and dovecot.

The problem with qmail is that you need either a big patchset or
a once patched setup and reuse that. Plus qmail really has
some not-so-nice bugs.

On the other hand, there seems to be no MTA out there, that can be
configured so easy like qmail (ever created a mail addr with
"cp .qmail-template .qmail-domain-user" with another MTA?).

Oh, btw, "froehliche Weihnachten"

Nico

-- 
``...if there's one thing about Linux users, they're do-ers, not whiners.''
(A quotation of Andy Patrizio I completely agree with)


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