On Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 12:39:14PM +0000, Mark Evans wrote:
Any suggestions for how I might run a "Hotmail" online email type of service from our Linux box. Are there any programs out there already set up to do this sort of thing ?
Check out http://www.inter7.com or http://www.courier-mta.org
Unfortunatly there is a lack of Windows or X11 based mail programs which can read maildir format. Even though it is ideal for network workstations.
Less software available for maildirs is the only downside that I really see (although qmail supports mailbox too) and possible unavailability of inodes where there's a lot of mail for a lot of users - although it's abilities over nfs tend to make this last point moot. Seen on Slashdot:
Maildir [compared to mbox] is better because:
1) it is more reliable over nfs. Maildir is designed to not need file-level locking, which sucks over nfs.
2) maildir is more resistant to catastrophic corruption since each email is a seperate file.
3) maildir keeps metadata about the email in the emails filename, rather than a seperate index file. This helps prevent the metadata, such as "replied-to" and "forwarded this" from getting out of sync
4) filesystem level tool work well with maildir. you don't need special "formail" type tools to work wirh them, bash scripting is capable of doing it all by itself.
5) maildir is better positioned to take advantage of advanced new filesystems like reiserfs. when reiserfs has a plugin for file-level transparent compression, maildir will be able to selectivle and invisibly compess emails to the disk without requiring other programs/scripts to decompress them before use.
As for qmail: 1) Requires little or no administration cf Sendmail. Installed qmail over 3 yrs ago and still on same release. 2) Modular approach rather than `stick it into one great binary' approach of sendmail/exim seems to result in less likelihood of bugs as evidenced by cert. How do you get on with it Mark? I guess you use mailboxes. -- Frank *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* | Boroughbridge | Tel: 01423 323019 | PGP keyID: 0xC0B341A3 | *-------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-------* http://www.esperance-linux.co.uk/