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Date:      Thu, 30 Mar 1995 00:01:22 +0000 ()
From:      Brian Tao <taob@gate.sinica.edu.tw>
To:        Dick Bednar <dick_bednar@qmail.fullerton.edu>
Cc:        hackers@freefall.cdrom.com
Subject:   Re: Mail...
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSI.3.91.950329235448.6671D-100000@aries.ibms.sinica.edu.tw>
In-Reply-To: <199503281700.RAA11150@star-gate.com>

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>>> "Dick Bednar" said:
> 
> My group is grappling blindly with the prospect of providing mail to 25,000
> students.  Sadly, our Unix experience is limited, and much of it is
> out-of-date.

    Eep.  25000 mail accounts == 25000+ entries in your /etc/passwd,
and 25000 files in /var/mail.  Although you did not explicitly say all
25000 mail accounts had to be on the same machine, I would recommend
splitting that up into different mail servers.  Divide the students
into faculties or degree major or whatever.  Then have a separate host
for each and tell the students which machine to use to retrieve mail.
If you want a consistent address for all the students, set up a
separate mailhost that routes incoming mail to the proper machine
based on a username lookup table.  I don't really see any technical
problems with having 25000 mail accounts on one machine, but that can
mean a *hell* of a lot of disk space...



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