Email server recommendation

[Bill Vermillion]

Throwing caution to the wind and speaking without thinking about
what was being said on Wed, May 09, 2007 at 07:25 ,
Mike Tibor blurted this:

> 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.

The configuration is not quite the same depending upon the
distribution you use.  SuSE for example puts the configuration
files in another place, and if you use their YAST or other tool,
you can easily make mistakes that really aren't that visible.

I had a problem where mail to any MS site would bounce, with some
error that was not artfully crafted and semi-masked the error -
while mail to any other mail server not running MS software went
through just fine.

That was a pain to find.

As to skill sets for Linux vs FreeBSD - if the system is only
going to be a mail server there is not that much you will have to
learn.


> 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

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com