Hi folks,
[Apologies for length of email]
I recently built IMAPD 2.0.9 + SASL 1.5.24 + Berkeley DB 3.11 from source on
NetBSD 1.5 release (i386). I use LMTP/TCP delivery with Exim 3.20, pwcheck for
auth and plaintext over SSL with Netscape 4.75 MUA. Overall, quite impressed!
Now for the problems: ;)
Berkeley DB 3 on NetBSD (and similarly in FreeBSD) is installed as:
/usr/pkg/lib/libdb3.a and /usr/pkg/include/db3/*.h so as not to conflict with
the "native" db in NetBSD.
In configure I had to change db-3 to db3 and in some source files had to
change includes for <db*.h> to <db3/db*.h>. This is for both IMAPD and SASL.
[Incidentally, I'm not using sasldb in SASL so is it truly necessary to
compile both with the same DB version as is recommended?]
For imapd I had to do CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/include/krb5 -I/usr/include/openssl"
before running configure to pick up include files. However some of the
Makefiles under perl/ didn't "inherit" these CPPFLAGS, so I had to add the
includes to the "INC" hash key in Makefile.PL as these seem to be
(post-configure) generated Makefiles
Simple fixes, but thought it might be worth mentioning.
Now for some questions:
- libwrap wasn't detected, even though it exists and works!
/usr/lib/libwrap.a, /usr/lib/libwrap.so* and /usr/include/tcpd.h are there
ok. passing --with-libwrap=/usr doesn't work either.
- configure has a problem with NetBSD's mmap() and warns:
*** This system does not have a working mmap()
*** Expect a considerable performance penalty
Is this serious? The IMAP system will eventually have ~700 accounts and at
most 30 simultaneous IMAP sessions, with a 'reasonable' volume of incoming
mail via lmtpd.
Would NetBSD's Unified Buffer Cache (not in 1.5) solve this?
- Do you recommend poll or idled for the "IDLE" method? How do these benefit
the server/client if they make use of them?
- Is ~700 accounts enough to warrant enabling "hashimapspool"? On the current
POP3 system there is ~700 mail spoolfiles in /var/mail (FFS + soft updates)
with no noticeable problems or complaints.
- With plaintext login [using pwcheck], cyradm asks for the password twice:
first "Please enter your password:" then "IMAP Password:" - any reason why?
- Is it safe to make the same user cyrus runs as ("cyrus") part of the
"admins" list in imapd.conf? Should I just create another user ("cyradm")
for the sole purpose of this? (Yes I could use "root")
- Next, is there a way to set flags (New, Read, Replied, Forwarded, etc.)
using the Cyrus::IMAP::Admin modules? I need this for converting Netscape
POP3 "local" mailfiles to IMAP a/c's (some of you might remember my posts
last year about this conversion). Netscape stores it's flags in a
X-Mozilla-Status header (the values of which I have) and I would like
to preserve them.
- What do people recommend for "distribution lists" in an IMAP environment:
- Use a shared folder with an email alias for posting to it and then use
ACLs to grant/deny people access the folder? Unfortunately, the Netscape
MUA only checks "Inbox" for new mail so it's easy to miss new mail in
other folders..
OR
- Use dedicated mailing list software [like mailman with a web interface
for admin tasks] In this case mail would be delivered to Inbox. There is
also the concept of having "list owners", although this could be achieved
by giving someone the "a" right on the shared folder discussed above.
- Finally, any good IMAP MUAs for Windows? Netscape 4.7x is a bit braindead
in many ways. I know there is Mulberry and I think Pegasus does IMAP too, but
the advantage over them with Netscape is:
- The netscape UI is quite nice
- Our users are used to this (i.e. just click on the little "mail" icon!)
- Our current setup has netscape 'auto-configuration' so users never have to
setup their a/c. And they can't screw up the config either as it's "fixed"
on next login. In other words, "it just works" (TM) which is very handy
for us admins.
[For those interested, it's a perl script run from samba 'before' login
has occurred which over-rides specific keys in prefs.js in their netscape
home dir (which is on the server) and sets their username etc. for their
mail a/c.]
What MUAs do other people recommend? (Sorry, this must be a perennial
question)
Thanks in advance,
Regards,
--
Cillian
