Sendmail - IMAP-UW - Cyrus-SASL2 - SMTPAUTH problems

[Greg Groth]

Sorry for the double submission, I totally screwed up.  I have added my 
response this time...

>From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm at toybox.placo.com>
>To: "Joe Auty" <joe at netmusician.org>, "Kirk Davis" <Kirk.Davis at epsb.ca>
>CC: "Greg Groth" <ggroth99 at hotmail.com>, <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
>Subject: RE: Sendmail - IMAP-UW - Cyrus-SASL2 - SMTPAUTH problems
>Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:34:28 -0800
>
>
>I'm sure glad that this message didn't pass through my work mailserver
>so that it's didn't see it, since my work e-mail inbox has 16383 messages
>in it  (the limit that Outlook can display in IMAP mode) and is 412
>megabytes
>in size, and performance is perfectly fine both with Outlook and
>Horde/IMP.
>
>I wouldn't want my mailserver reading it and thinking that it's OK to
>slack off.
>
>   And yes I know I need to delete
>some messages, speak to the hand if your going to make that crack.
>
>This is imap-uw/sendmail.
>
>Perhaps you might consider that since you haven't run imap-uw in
>a while that your no longer qualified to make claims about it?  Or
>perhaps
>you never had it setup properly?  Or perhaps your hardware was slow?
>
>Nothing is wrong with Postfix / Courier-IMAP but nothing is wrong either
>with sendmail / uw-imap.
>
>Ted
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Joe Auty
> >Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 1:53 PM
> >To: Kirk Davis
> >Cc: Greg Groth; freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> >Subject: Re: Sendmail - IMAP-UW - Cyrus-SASL2 - SMTPAUTH problems
> >
> >
> >Hey Greg,
> >
> >Sorry if this completely throws a monkey wrench into your plans, but
> >I feel inspired to interject since I once had a nearly identical
> >setup as you...
> >
> >I switched to Postfix and Courier-IMAP since I found that performance
> >of large mailboxes in IMAP-UW was pretty poor, especially over web-
> >based email where messages are not cached. I switched to Postfix
> >because it is so much more simple and straight forward than Sendmail.
> >You should have no problems switching to Postfix, since it is
> >basically Sendmail with a nicer wrapper/configuration.
> >
> >Just food for thought.

I appreciate both of your comments, as I have stated I am new to BSD.  Part 
of my problem is the huge amount of software available, and no good way to 
determine what will work better for my situation.  Perhaps if I explain my 
situation, it would help some.  We've been running Sendmail and a 
POP-Before-SMTP script for the last 6 years on a Redhat box.  I think it 
started out on 5.2, and was up to 7.3 when it crashed 3 weeks ago.  I had 
been planning to upgrade the server, and had a new box ready to go, but I 
had stalled on the OS.  I didn't want to go down the Redhat route because of 
strictly personal issues that are more opinions than fact, and a friend 
suggest FreeBSD.

The server crash pretty much forced my hand, and my goal was to replicate 
what we had in place ASAP.  Because of my (limited) knowledge of Sendmail, I 
went that route as I know nothing of the alternatives.  I went with IMAP-UW 
because not because of anything I had read, but because I was attempting to 
get the POP-Before-SMTP port to work (which it didn't - long story), and 
IMAP-UW seemed a good alternative as it is a POP and IMAP server and was 
easily configured in POP-Before-SMTP.

Since I could not find a POP-Before-SMTP solution that I could get to 
operate (I had problems with POP-Before-SMTP, and DRAC before throwing in 
the towel), I decided to switch to SMTP-AUTH.  So here's my situation, we 
have about 25 users on the server.  I need POP and IMAP that will operate 
with and without SSL, and SMTP that can handle SMTP-AUTH with and without 
SSL.  Out of the 25 users, I have 3 that are email packrats, and have 
between 2-4 gigs of email apiece.  They are currently using POP on Outlook 
Express, but will be switching over to IMAP on Thunderbird in the near 
future (I also have 5 users that I'm not sure what client they are using, 
we're hosting their domain - long story).  Our office peronnel will be 
migrating to IMAP, using SSL when out of the office, and plain text when in. 
  The five users in which we are hosting their email will remain on POP, and 
although SSL would be nice, I want the ability to offer plain text in case I 
run into client issues.  Similar circumstances for SMTP, I can relay by 
domain for users on our network, and would like to use SMTP-AUTH for off-ste 
users.  SSL preferred, but offer plain text in case of client issues.  Last 
issue would be something that will play nice with SquirrelMail.

Although I'm very familiar with administering Sendmail (starting, stopping, 
backing up, running makemaps), configuring is another story.  While SMTP is 
pretty much running as stable as it ever has, I still have issues from time 
to time.  For instance I am sending this from Hotmail as this list is 
currently bouncing email from my server because of some error I have not 
investigated yet.  At this moment I am pretty much open to anything, but I 
don't have a good way of evaluating different options other than trial and 
error (and I'm kind of short on time).  I know that a lot of times it comes 
down to peronal taste (my reason for dumping Redhat), but sometimes there 
are specific issues that will make a certain solution better than others.  
Based off of my stated needs and my current issues (Sendmail configuration), 
is there a better solution, or is what I have now pretty much the same as 
other alternatives for my specfic needs?

Thank you both for your attention to this matter.

Greg Groth

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