On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 07:28:52AM -0400, Charles Marcus wrote:
On 2010-06-28 9:05 PM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
I guess this is different with virtual users than with system users? Are you using virtual or system users Charles?
Virtual of course... doesn't everyone? ;)
Virtual mailboxes have their place, of course, but they're overused, especially at small sites. I suppose this might be in part because most HOWTOs are for virtual.
I recently saw someone asking for help, having set up a "simple" server with virtual mailbox (yes, singular) and mysql! The querent was trying to add a SECOND account and did not know how!
I started into mail on a very small scale, and that approach served me well. I set up Postfix by reading the comments in main.cf; later when I got the idea that I might want POP3 or IMAP, I uncommented lines in inetd.conf (popa3d I think, and uw-imap), and they worked. When kids got old enough to use email, adduser[1] and there they go.
I didn't get into virtual mailboxes until later, on a job, and when I did, I knew enough to question the wisdom of it. Why did we need this additional authentication database? All our users were using Samba via system accounts too. It could have been all integrated! The "advantages" I was told of doing it the virtual way were all based on misunderstandings. (One common one: "I don't want mail users to have shell access." Giving them a shell of /bin/false and/or setting sshd_config(5) access controls does the job.)
I think many if not most of the questions we see on these lists are from people who have made a bad choice of using virtual mailboxes, often as a direct consequence of that choice.
Email grew up with Unix, so it's no accident that Unix shell usage has very nice integration with email. Probably a lot of the folks reading this list would not even need an IMAPd if they knew more about these things.
I often encounter frustrated newbies who tried to do the whole thing all at once. It makes much more sense to start off small, throw in the relational databases later, learning the finer points of how to manage your OS along the way. The secret is that you can have a fully-functional mail server with very little bother, using system accounts. Postfix (or other MTA) and Dovecot will pretty much Just Work, right out of the box.
[1] adduser is a Slackware-specific frontend wrapper script for useradd(8) and other tools from the shadow package.
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