From owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jul 22 06:29:24 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 87FDC37B401 for ; Tue, 22 Jul 2003 06:29:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Shenton.org (23.ebbed1.client.atlantech.net [209.190.235.35]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id ECEBF43F93 for ; Tue, 22 Jul 2003 06:29:22 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from chris@Shenton.Org) Received: (qmail 46632 invoked by uid 1001); 22 Jul 2003 13:29:20 -0000 To: James Godwin References: From: Chris Shenton Date: 22 Jul 2003 09:29:20 -0400 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <86d6g28zbj.fsf@PECTOPAH.shenton.org> Lines: 29 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Ideal mail server: qmail or postfix X-BeenThere: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Internet Services Providers List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 13:29:24 -0000 James Godwin writes: > I was wondering what mail servers fellow ISP are running. I can't decide > between postfix or qmail. At one ISP I support, we've been running a qmail-based system with domain and user virtualization provided by vpopmail, courier-imap, and sqwebmail. Been solid as a rock. For lists, ezmlm-idx is the best I've used. Check www.inter7.org for pointers to the vpopmail stuff. I've set up qmail/vpopmail/courier-imap/sqwebmail for other small customers and never had a complaint, it just works. For a larger site (2000 people) I'm building something similar but using qmail-ldap for account provisioning and virtualization instead of vpopmail. I will again be using courier-imap and sqwebmail. One of the big advantages of qmail is its preferred mailbox format called Maildir. Each message is stored in a separate file which makes updates, deletions, scanning for new mail, etc much much faster than a large flat file. It's also safe across NFS mounts so you can have a number of mail servers reading from and delivering to the mailstore at the same time, without corruption. This makes it possible to easily scale a mail system as your users grow: just add more servers. Qmail, courier-imap, and sqwebmail all understand Maildir so they're a good combination.