Date: Sat, 08 Apr 2006 17:28:33 -0400 From: Francisco Reyes <lists@stringsutils.com> To: Bill Moran <wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> Cc: Duane Whitty <duane@greenmeadow.ca>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: OT - Scalable email server solution needed Message-ID: <cone.1144531713.523081.20664.1000@zoraida.natserv.net> References: <443731E5.9030209@greenmeadow.ca> <20060408074034.200f77a1.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
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Bill Moran writes: > One advantage of Maildir over mbox and the Cyrus db (that, for some reason, > I seldom see touted) is that you can make a safe backup of a Maildir without > shutting down the SMTP, POP, or IMAP server. For a small/simple setup I think Maildir is most definitely the way to go. >From what I have seen so far working with Cyrus.. and from what I read... Cyrus scales far beyond what can be easily done with most Maildir format. >With both mbox and the Cyrus > mail system, you have to shut the mail system down to back up the mail > boxes. Although that is true, using a database such as in Cyrus can in theory be a big speed booster. > it! With both mbox and Cyrus, if you back up without stopping the server, > and entire mailbox will be corrupted if the file holding it's mail is in > use during backup and restoring will be difficult or impossible. Maildir can also get corrupted. :-( At least with Courier.. I have seen several folders go bad and Courier did not have enough functionality to easily find which folders had problems. > Once you've chosen to use Maildir, you can choose which softwares you want > to use to get mail into and out of your Maildirs. Agree 100% that this is one great appeal of using Maildir. The ability to easily switch different alternatives. > I recommend PostgreSQL for the DB. Until I started to work for an email provider I had never used Mysql, having used PostgreSQL for many, many years.. I must say that after using Mysql... I became to appreciate even more PostgreSQL. Coming from database administrator background I felt completely at home with PostgreSQL. > For the SMTP system I recommend Postfix. I find postfix to be easy to use, easy to learn.. and highly stable and scalable. Great mailing list too. > For the POP/IMAP system, I recommend Dovecot. I've been using it since it > was beta and it just works. Does it scale better than Courier? In particular I find Courier's footprint is about 3 to 5 MB per connection. A bit on the high side when one has hundreds of connections per machine. > over NFS, you can even run multiple computers all off the same backend. I can attest to that. :-) > PostgreSQL is a little more of a commitment, but it seems as if support > for PostgreSQL is growing It's a good choice. :-)
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