Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 11:26:36 +0300 From: Evren Yurtesen <yurtesen@ispro.net.tr> To: "Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC" <chad@shire.net> Cc: FreeBSD Questions Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: e-mail server farm question Message-ID: <4472C73C.9040501@ispro.net.tr> In-Reply-To: <76921773-B1C7-4500-8FE7-78B815961860@shire.net> References: <4471ABF0.3090804@ispro.net.tr> <6.0.0.22.2.20060522102107.0274be28@mail.computinginnovations.com> <4471ECAA.3030406@daleco.biz> <20060522231641.7d63db65@vixen42.vulpes> <4472BB57.7020001@ispro.net.tr> <76921773-B1C7-4500-8FE7-78B815961860@shire.net>
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Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC wrote: > > On May 23, 2006, at 1:35 AM, Evren Yurtesen wrote: > >> Vulpes Velox wrote: >> >>> On Mon, 22 May 2006 11:54:02 -0500 >>> Kevin Kinsey <kdk@daleco.biz> wrote: >>> >>>>> At 07:17 AM 5/22/2006, Evren Yurtesen wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Hello, >>>>>> >>>>>> I was wondering how does services like yahoo mail is storing >>>>>> e-mails. Somehow the smtp server should know where to deliver >>>>>> the mail inside the system and webmail should know from which >>>>>> server to read it from. >>>>>> >>>>>> Does anybody have any practical ideas about how it is done? >>>>>> >>>> >>>> Derek Ragona wrote: >>>> > If you are using sendmail, as most FreeBSD users are, you can >>>> > check the sendmail.org site for information on mail handling. >>>> > There are a number of methods that depend on your setup. >>>> > >>>> >>>> Well, it's pretty obvious that they aren't using a stock >>>> SendMail: >>>> >>>> # telnet mx2.mail.yahoo.com 25 >>>> Trying 67.28.113.72... >>>> Connected to mx2.mail.yahoo.com. >>>> Escape character is '^]'. >>>> 220 mta309.mail.re4.yahoo.com ESMTP YSmtp service ready >>>> >>>> Short of finding an article written by someone 'in the know', >>>> or an answer for someone like that, we can only guess. I'd >>>> probably start with guessing a big DB on a large SAN; >>>> which pretty much negates the "which server to read from" >>>> question (up to a point). Everything else is pretty >>>> academic. SMTP, IMAP, POP. >>> >>> Maildir makes it easy to distribute it across multiple machines as >>> well. >> >> >> What do you mean exactly? distributing 1 user's mails into seperate >> machines? I didnt understand how Maildir helps to this actually. >> > > I am not sure anyone was talking about distributing 1 person's mail > across separate machines. The discussion seemed to be how to handle > large amounts of mail spread out across machines, which maildir helps > with as you can have one or more file servers and lots of consumers > (imap/pop) and deliverers (mta) accessing those maildirs on your file > servers. Combine with a backend database of some sort (we use an ldap > db that includes the path for a specific accounts mail) and voilá. > > Chad > Ah sorry, I didnt think it that way for a moment. I thought you meant Maildir stores mails in seperate files compred to mbox format used by sendmail so...anyhow my mistake :) But it is possible to make changes to sendmail so that it will store to different folders also. I think the conclusion is a database, multiple smtp servers querying database to see where to forward received e-mails, multiple pop3/imap servers querying database to see from where to read the e-mails and multiple storage machines. This way it can scale to an unlimited size. So it requires a lot of coding :) Thanks, Evren
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