Email server recommendation

[Mike Tibor]

On Wed, 9 May 2007, Richard McNeilly wrote:

> I am trying to plan a ISP deployment using FreeBSD.  I am more familiar with 
> Linux but during my research, it's been pointed out that FreeBSD is the more 
> stable and reliable choice for an ISP.  Especially as an email server.
>
> What is the best way to manage the addition of new users to the email server? 
> local users or is there a database solution.  Also is there a software 
> package available to easily administer email accounts or does it all have to 
> be done with custom scripts.
>
> I would welcome any suggestions of anecdotes of experience.
>
> Regards,
> Richard

As much as I like FreeBSD, a good Linux distribution works just fine in 
the ISP setting--it really boils down to the skill sets of the people who 
are going to be working on them.  If your people have lots of experience 
with one, but not the other, it makes little sense to force upon 
them the one they're unfamiliar with simply because someone else thinks 
it's technically better.  Keep in mind though that sendmail configuration 
on Linux is pretty much the same as sendmail configuration on FreeBSD, so 
we're kind of splitting hairs here.

Methods of managing users probably depends on the size of the user base. 
My guess is that you'd be much happier managing users in an LDAP back end 
instead of local users.  There's lots of stuff out there for managing 
accounts in LDAP--LDAP Account Manager is one of them, and it's in the 
ports tree.

Mike