From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed May 4 17:32:40 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 68DD916A4CE for ; Wed, 4 May 2005 17:32:40 +0000 (GMT) Received: from smtp1.utdallas.edu (smtp1.utdallas.edu [129.110.10.12]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2031543D5E for ; Wed, 4 May 2005 17:32:40 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from pauls@utdallas.edu) Received: from utd49554 (utd49554.utdallas.edu [129.110.3.85]) by smtp1.utdallas.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id B9902388C41; Wed, 4 May 2005 11:59:15 -0500 (CDT) Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 11:59:14 -0500 From: Paul Schmehl To: "Matthias F. Brandstetter" , FreeBSD Message-ID: <8D1C2A81EF65E08642626856@utd49554.utdallas.edu> In-Reply-To: <200505041258.39573.haimat@lame.at> References: <200505041258.39573.haimat@lame.at> X-Mailer: Mulberry/3.1.6 (Linux/x86) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Subject: Re: installing big qmail server ... where to start? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: Paul Schmehl List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 17:32:40 -0000 --On Wednesday, May 04, 2005 12:58:39 PM +0200 "Matthias F. Brandstetter" wrote: > Hi all, > > I have to plan and setup a mail solution for about 50.000 users, here are > some key features requested by our customer: > > - self coded webfrontend w/ webmail and administration (filter, alias > etc) I'm not sure what you mean by self coded. Squirrelmail is a webmail front end that meets the requirements you've mentioned. There are others as well. - 100MB quota per user I would recommend that you put the mailboxes on a separate partition - perhaps even put var on a separate drive - and you should probably use RAID0 at least. > - autoresponder > - about 50.000 user > - online backup of data Without knowing if you're local or remote, it's hard to say. I do backups on a remote server using rsync to a local disk and rsync over ssh to a remote disk. The local backups make it easy to restore something in a pinch. The remote backups ensure that I don't lose data if the server crashes and both disks are toast. > - some more featuers for web frontend Like what? > > Since I happily use qmail for some other (but smaller) installations, I > want to try it with qmail here for this project as well. My only problem > is, I have no clue where to start ... beginning from "should I use 2 > redundant and really strong or some more but cheaper servers?" to "which > qmail distributions and patches should I use (ldap, mysql, ...)?" and > "how to store data (mails) and do online backup w/o downtime?". > Mail servers have a lot of I/O so you should use SCSI disks, if possible. RAID mirroring at least. I think LDAP would make user admin a lot easier. Mysql would probably help as well, given the number of users. I'm not sure I know what you mean by "store data (mails). If you're using qmail, set up IMAP and the mails are stored in maildir (I think). You can create a virtual user so you don't have to have /home/{uid} for all 50,000 users. Surely there's a doc on the web that walks you through all of this? No sense in reinventing the wheel..... Paul Schmehl (pauls@utdallas.edu) Adjunct Information Security Officer The University of Texas at Dallas AVIEN Founding Member http://www.utdallas.edu