Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 19:16:48 -0400 From: "Troy Settle" <troy@psknet.com> To: "Jan Knepper" <jan@smartsoft.cc>, "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: <BFEGKDHLHDNOJEIHJDBAGEADCAAA.troy@psknet.com> In-Reply-To: <39AFEC30.33D864CF@smartsoft.cc>
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Seconded. After 3.5 years of doing the ISP thing for someone else, I'm in the process of rolling my own. Only a couple weeks until I'm live :) My experience with sendmail and postfix have left me wanting more, and this time around, I'm going with qmail/vpopmail/courier-imapd. I'll probably start things out with sqwebmail, but may switch to twig. My only gripie about this setup, is qmailadmin, which is very lacking in features. For some of my product offerings (wholesale ISP and Commercial mail hosting), I'll probably end up having to write my own admin utility for everything. For HTTP, I'm going with apache (millions of users can't be wrong, can they?). Perhaps one of these days, I'll have the money for zeus, which by all accounts, kicks major tail over apache. For FTP, I looked at ProFTPd, but found it to be less than friendly. I'm opting (again), for ncftpd, which I absolutely love (worth every penny it costs). -- Troy Settle Pulaski Networks 540.994.4254 It's always a long day, 86400 doesn't fit into a short -----Original Message----- From: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG [mailto:owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Jan Knepper Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 1:50 PM To: Andrew Houghton Cc: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How can I create an elegant mail system for virtual domains? 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 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message
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