Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2000 13:49:36 -0400 From: Jan Knepper <jan@smartsoft.cc> To: Andrew Houghton <aah@acm.org> Cc: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How can I create an elegant mail system for virtual domains? Message-ID: <39AFEC30.33D864CF@smartsoft.cc> References: <00a101c01437$47f77390$6b46ca3f@desire>
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Hi, A couple of months ago I run into the same problem and was helped a lot by people on the list here. Right now I have setup my HOST with about 20 virtual domains and am unfortunately still waiting for the T1 connection. However... I have the following services running: 1. HTTP 2. SMTP 3. FTP For HTTP I used Apache, just as it comes with FreeBSD. (Running 4.0 at this moment). As you know, it's no problem to configure Apache for virtual domains. For SMTP (e-mail) I looked at sendmail and was about to change it so it would store e-mail for virtual domains in directories named after the domains when I was adviced to look at postfix and qmail. I looked at postfix, but realized that the problem there still is that the mail for john@john.com has to be redirected to john@yourhost.ext. john@sue.com would be ether john@yourhost.com (if it is the same john and the customer whats that, not very likely) or john1@yourhost.com. Needless to say I didn't like this configuration and tried qmail http://www.qmail.org/ instead. However, qmail itself does not solve the problem, but when you add vpopmail from http://www.inter7.com/vpopmail you will be able to handle e-mail for virtual domains seamlessly. I do right now and I am very happy with how it works. For FTP you will run into the same problem soner or later. Needless to say, the list here helped me again and I changed to proftpd http://www.proftpd.net/ Right now I have a directory structure like: ~/virtualdomains/one.com ~/virtualdomains/two.com ~/virtualdomains/three.com with underneath each domain directory the following directories: ~/etc ~/www ~/cgi The Apache setup files reside in ~/apache the directory where Apache per default puts the stuff. Of course the .conf files set the ~/www directories as document root and the ~/cgi directories for CGI. qmail resides in /var, but vpopmail is in ~/vpopmail with the several domains under ~/vpopmail/domains as ~/vpopmail/domains/one.com ~/vpopmain/domains/two.com ~/vpopmail/three.com If you want these directories accessable from the ~/virtualdomains directories I guess there are two options: 1. Move the directory from ~/vpopmail/domains/one.com to ~/virtualdomains/one.com/mail and create a symbolic link from ~/vpopmail/domains/one.com to ~/virtualdomains/one.com/mail. If you do this you have to make sure that the vpopmail/qmail daemon can read and write in the ~/virtualdomains directories where the mail is being stored I guess. 2. Just create a symbolic link from ~/virtualdomains/one.com/mail to ~/vpopmail/domains/one.com If someone has a better solution let me know! proftpd is so simple that just reading the docco will help you out there. proftpd has a great option of keeping passwd and group files per virtual domain. Something I really like. For that reason I have a ~/etc directory where I simulate the idea of the real /etc directory. Sorry for the long reply, but I have really found that a setup like this is pretty structured (as I like to have things structured, and so is FreeBSD!) There are quite a couple of utilities for qmail, check http://www.inter7.com/ that allow admin of the Email domains. I don't use any of those (yet) since the number of domains I am hosting isn't that huge (yet). HTH Don't worry, be Kneppie! Jan Andrew Houghton wrote: > Sorry to spam the list, but I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick > wall here.. if anyone has any thoughts on the following, and can spare a few > cycles, we can do this through email. Just so you know, I'm running postfix > as my MTA on a fairly recent 4.1-STABLE box. > > I want to set up a single box with multiple virtual domains, where each > domain can be administered by the domain owner. Say john owns john.com, and > sue owns sue.com. Their websites and email are being handled by my box. > The directory structure looks like this: > > /virtualhosts/john.com > /virtualhosts/sue.com > /virtualhosts/.... > > with each virtual host having a directory structure of: > > .../www > .../mail > .../ftp > .../... > > John should be able to setup a certain number of mail id's, and access those > id's via a POP or IMAP server in an intuitive way. That means that if John > has created ids for 'webmaster', 'info', and 'support', he should be able to > 1) have any or all of those be forwarding addresses to some other mail > account he has somewhere else, 2) have any of those be forwarding addresses > to a different mail account on the local box, 3) have any or all of those > store mail on the local box, and 4) access those by pointing his mail client > at [pop|imap].john.com, and using a uid of 'webmaster', 'info', or 'support' > to get the mail for those accounts. Ideally, John should also be able to > setup and control a certain number of mailing lists on his own. > > I'd like to store *all* user information in either an LDAP server or a local > database . That means the IMAP server, the POP server, the FTP server, and > the MTA (in this case postfix) should be using the LDAP server or the > database for all lookups - directory information, uid, password, etc. etc. > etc. Using PAM for some info is fine (I got the pam_ldap module working on > my FreeBSD box, which makes me happy). > > I'd also like to use Maildir for mail rather than mailbox, so that users' > mail gets counted towards their quota. > > ---- > > Given all that, I feel I'm really close to having things work, but I'm > massively confused about two things: > 1) the best way to handle the changing state of a virtual host's mail > system -- how do I deliver mail to a place within the virtual hosts mail > directory, in a way that will make sense to whatever POP/IMAP server I end > up using? > 2) which of the myriad POP / IMAP servers will allow me to accomplish point > 4, above -- webmaster@john.com is different from webmaster@sue.com, and > nobody should *ever* have to use a compound uid (that is, no pointing your > client at pop.john.com and using a uid of 'webmaster@john.com'.) > > This must have been done, somewhere. All the various pieces for this are > out there, but they don't seem to work with each other -- cyrus does a lot > of what I want, and handles quotas itself, but I can't figure out how to > make cyrus listen to particular interfaces and use the domain name > intelligently. solidpop3d does a lot of what I want, but requires external > files to do the username mapping (as far as I can tell it won't use the LDAP > server). courier IMAP does a lot of what I want but doesn't provide the POP > server. > > ---- > > If someone has done this, please give me a yell and let me know. If anyone > has looked into this and decided that everything I detailed above can be > done *except* some particular part, please let me know. I'm looking for a > streamlined, all-inclusive, administratively elegant email system, and I'm > not sure it exists (without running out and buying a Mirapoint box which I'm > sure is prohibitively priced for my needs). > > Thanks for your time, > > Andrew > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message -- Jan Knepper Smartsoft, LLC 88 Petersburg Road Petersburg, NJ 08270 U.S.A. http://www.smartsoft.cc/ http://www.pianoprincess.com/ http://www.mp3.com/pianoprincess http://www.riffage.com/Bands/0,2939,2859,00.html http://pianoprincess.iuma.com/ http://www.changemusic.com/piano_princess Phone : 609-628-4260 FAX : 609-628-1267 FAX : 303-845-6415 http://www.fax4free.com/ Phone : 020-873-3837 http://www.xoip.nl/ (Dutch) FAX : 020-873-3837 http://www.xoip.nl/ (Dutch) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message
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