[lug] Postfix IMAP Server & Webmail Recommendation

Nate Duehr nate at natetech.com
Wed Dec 19 23:43:23 MST 2007


On Dec 13, 2007, at 4:07 PM, karl horlen wrote:

> I think I'm leaning towards cyrus because it's most
> difficult from what I can gather and probably will
> cause me the most pain setting up and I like pain ;-).
> Actually, I don't like pain but my thought is that
> the trouble will be worth the robustness and
> flexibility down the road in anticipation of things I
> may not have thought of at this point.

Heh heh.  I used to think that way.

These days, I keep seeing overly complex technology doing tasks that  
much more simple things that require less maintenance, initial  
brainpower, and long-term admin frustration on lots of work-related  
systems, and I've moved into the KISS camp.  (You know... "Keep it  
Simple, Stupid!")

> Is there any other webmail alternative to
> squirrelmail?  I don't know of any other.  And
> wondering how secure sendmail is?

I've seen a few -- some are part of larger "content management" or  
"project management" systems -- too much bloat.   Others are clunky in  
that they don't "speak" IMAP, they copy files.  I think SM is still  
the only one (no matter how ugly its HTML is by default) that really  
plays great with just about any IMAP server out there.

As far as my setup goes on the home box, it's exim because I'm an old  
Debian-head and exim has been their default MTA since exim3 days.  It  
was a "path of least resistance" to continue using it.  On new boxes,  
postfix is much better at the KISS principal and performance is MUCH  
better all-round.  I just have no desire to re-build all the "stuff" I  
have exim4 doing on a new box, yet.  When the server finally needs to  
be "retired" to green pastures, I'll rebuild with postfix.

As far as IMAP -- I would use dovecot, but I ran into problems on  
Debian's early versions and I needed IMAP up *now*, back then.  So  
Courier was the closest to KISS.  I don't use half or more of its  
features, and it's a performance hog also compared to dovecot, but it  
works.

Maildir is by far worth the effort to set up over mbox.  Coming from  
the "old-school" days, this is one that was worth doing... converted  
all the massive mbox files over to maildir with someone's perl script  
and never looked back.

Sendmail -- ahh, the granddaddy of them all.  In the right hands it  
can sing and dance, but postfix can sing and dance even in a novice's  
hands.  If you know and love it (I never did), by all means it's  
powerful enough to do just about anything you can think of.  If you  
don't want to claw your eyes out at 2AM cussing at its archaic  
configuration files.  Even with macros and m4, it's still a nightmare  
for the uninitiated.

So... my "perfect" server would be:  Postfix, dovecot, all on top of a  
Maildir for mail storage.  I'm not sure what I like the best for user/ 
virtual setups... everything seems relatively clunky, and I know that  
using MySQL to manage the userbase probably makes the most sense, but  
I dunno -- there's something more simple and Unix-like about text  
files for configuration.  Having to dink around via either something  
like MySQLAdmin on the web, or hacking up some SQL just to add a few  
users, seems -- over-engineered in some ways to me.

I did help a site get up and running with Qmail and associated tools,  
and found that if you can live with keeping your build environment  
around and intact (qmail is missing major features that have to be  
patched in from source with a rebuild, most of the time) -- the  
"benefit" if you can call it that, was utter speed.  Qmail whipped the  
pants off of what was available at the time for setting up a MASSIVE  
number of users, but I think you could argue that a postfix/dovecot  
setup would too, now.

I guess all-in-all if people are relying on you for e-mail services,  
keep it as simple as possible to completely rebuild (if you have to  
and the backups are bad/gone/missing) from the ground up in a minimal  
period of time.  Why?  Because after you've gone through the "painful"  
setup ONCE, it's out of your system.  You don't want to have to do  
THAT again!  (GRIN!)

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com






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