[TriLUG] Managing postfix/squirrelmail

[Tanner Lovelace]

On 5/10/06, Douglas Ward <binaryflow at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have been tasked to set up a new e-mail server that will manage about 1000
> mailboxes and have decided to use postfix. We can't afford to purchase 1000
> additional Exchange licenses.  I am interested in anyone's experiences in
> the following areas:
>
> 1) I intend to set up the users (regular system accounts) on the server and
> store their mailboxes in the /home/username directory.  I can easily back up
> the mailbox using rsync.  How can I back up the user accounts in case the
> server were to ever fail?  I don't think that backing up /etc/passwd will
> catch the passwords.

Douglas,

After spending several years administering both wu-imap (which, if you're
placing mailboxes in the home directory, I assume you'll be using that or
possibly dovecot) and cyrus imap, I would strongly recommend going with
cyrus.  The downside for you is that it doesn't store the mailboxes in the
home directory.  The huge upside, however, is that it has much, much, much,
much, much, much! better performance and will generally be a much more
stable system.

I'd also echo what Magnus says and suggest just using the user information
directly from windows.  Cyrus uses SASL for it's authentication so you'd just
configure SASL to query PAM and PAM to query the windows information.
That's fairly easy to set up and will work very well.

Cheers,
Tanner

--
Tanner Lovelace
clubjuggler at gmail dot com
http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
(fieldless) In fess two roundels in pale, a billet fesswise and an
increscent, all sable.