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Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated

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Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated
Hi,

I recently discovered your new product and am interested in your advice as to whether it would work well with my setup. I administer two very high traffic sites (over 5 million hits per month). Both are very heavily perl intensive, and not completely optimized. We've looked at a few mail solutions but the bottom line that i've come up with for our needs is this:

1) We need to be able to mail to local users on a different domain than the scripts. This part is currently setup.
2) We use qmail as our MTA, and would like not to create system users. Pop users would do, and i think we can set it up so that they must retrieve mail from localhost, thus disallowing people to use pop clients at home and such.
3) We would like to not have to setup a cache all type box. I think its kind of redundant and will cause problems.
4) Systems resources etc: Dual p500 716 megs ram 40 gigs of storage.
Question, is the mail stored in a database, and how much space do you think that 10,000 accounts would take up. I think the databas files are on a different partition. Also, when will we be able to see a demo? or a working sample.

Thanks a lot. You can email me if you have answers, maase@paintballcity.com

Edward
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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
I think I see what you are asking, but I haven't been able to set up my qmail the way you are describing, much less get a webmail interface on top of it.

The way the Gossamer Mail program works, to use the virtual feature you need a catch-all account, because it doesn't actually do any mail processing. It reads the mail from the account after it's already been delivered. The way the "POP" method works, is it imports the mail from the users pop accounts, after delivery.

Now, Qmail can deliver to all sorts of options, the trick would be to make Qmail deliver in a way that meets your needs, and this program can collect from.

I would like to set up pop-only users in qmail, and allow them to pick up the mail via POP, as well as adding in the web-mail support for non-POP users. I thought Qmail could do that, handling the mail requests without the need for the /etc/password file.

I've looked at vpopmail - vchkpw, and qmailadmin have not been able to make them work. I'm hoping the soon-to-be released Qmail book will shed some light on the process.

It would seem a natural to have virtual domain (POP accounts) and allow web-access to them. Qmail seems (in theory) able to do it.







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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
Hi Edward,

1. Gossamer Mail does not need to be on the same domain, or even the same server as the script. It communicates via POP when checking mail, it does not access mail files directly.

2. This is quite easy to setup using qmail. As for Gossamer Mail, all you need to do is create a user with the userid/password equal to your pop box. There are hooks you can put into the program so that it will setup a pop box for you automatically.

3. Catch all is not required.

4. Should be fine.

The mail header/meta information like subject, date, to, from, etc is stored in a database. The message body + attachments are stored on disk, not in a flatfile database though. Your layout is:

data directory / msgs / user_prefix / user_account

So for user joe, his messages are stored in:

data/msgs/j/joe

and each message is a separate file. This structure has worked well on a system with 70,000 accounts.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
Alex,

I can see the burgeoning need for a Qmail forum :)

I've figured more out about Qmail in the past 4 days from all the chatter here, than I have been able to do in 6 months reading the "manual".

I'm still waiting for that new Qmail book. Should be out any day, if they are on-schedule.

I've still not been able to configure the virtual POP type user -- just a Qmail user, without a Unix log-on. I know it's something simple, probably, but it has to be "major" since I was not able to get any of the 4 Qmail plug-ins to work either (admin, mailing list, vpop, vcheck).

I know I'm probably not alone in this -- my Qmail _works_. Every time I set up a new Unix user, they have access to all the mail features. Aliases and redirects work. I just can't configure "Qmail" itself.

To get the most out of Gossamer Mail, it seems that you need to have a really working Qmail -- but there is very little information out there on it.

I'm not knocking the basic sendmail/POP options, but I see some awesome capability down the road if Qmail is used. Qmail was written to "fix" the "problems" and "shortcomings" of sendmail. As such, it _is_ a "modern" mail program, which for Unix is really amazing <G> Heck, sendmail is a Model A, and Qmail is at least a 57' Chevy <G> -- and this is 2000! <G>

But, the point of this post (in case it got lost) is that there will be a lot of Qmail chatter going on, and should it be mixed in with the general Gossamer Mail questions, or should Qmail specifics be pulled out into another forum?


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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
For now, no, probably not worth splitting it up, but once the program gets a good size user base, we may want to split things into a couple forums.

As for qmail, I love it. Wouldn't use anything else. I never understood why you need to create a unix user account just to get a separate pop account. Then you have to make sure you set invalid shells, no home directory, etc, etc. Qmail with vpopmail/qmailadmin is very slick indeed.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
Alex,

What were those last two... vpopmail and ??? -- are those management scripts or control files and where can you find them if they're management scripts?

Thanks
Edward

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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
vpopmail and qmailadmin, both can be found at inter7.com. vpopmail allows you to run multiple domains quite easily, no users attached to a pop box, and qmailadmin is a web interface to manage a domain (add pops/forwards/autoresponders/etc).

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
Alex,

Is there any documentation for this besides the INSTALL file? I spent a few hours with this, and actually got vpopmail/vpwchk and qmailadmin installed (had to install a bunch of other stuff -- icnluding a tcp-rules package) to get it all to work.

But, now I have a lot of questions about what it's doing, and how it interacts with the basic qmail package. For instance, how does the virtual pop work with real pop accounts? It seems that "postmaster" is somewhat hard coded. I tried to log on with a new pop account, and got a script/500 error that just said 'premature end of headers'.

Many, many questions .... and no place for answers. :)



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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
When you setup vpopmail it installs into:

/home/vpopmail

and you'll have a directory called domains inside of which there will be one directory for each domain on the machine. Then inside the domain, you get one directory for each pop box in that domain. For instance on your machine you might have:

/home/vpopmail/domains/postcards.com/pugdog

that's where your mail would be stored. It's stored using qmails Maildir format. However, all mail on the machine is stored inside of there, all owned by user 'vpopmail'. The main limitation to this is you can't use pine or other shell tools to check your email, you'd need to use a tool that checks via pop, not directly off the file.

You can use qmailadmin to login as user 'postmaster' (it is hardcoded) and add/remove/modify pop's, forwards, autoresponders, mailing lists, etc. You just enter in postmaster, the domain, and your password.

As for other documentation, not that I'm aware of. But let me know if you have questions and I'd be happy to answer.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
Ok, so only "postmaster" can log in... that's what's generating the error <G> I tried to log in as one of the other pop users.

I guess distilling down the questions to the bare essence:

My machine has "postmaster" enabled, as the qmail catch all account. This is for all the domains on the system. It's an alias, and aliased to my main ID, as is mailer-daemon or whatever that other one is.

I have 17 "hard" accounts on the machine. Plus, 30-40 account aliases in the main qmail alias file.

I have 9 domains (active) that are getting mail. They get mail at the "hard" accounts, then to the aliases, then to a catch all for each domain.

Now, I've just installed the virtual features of all this.

How do I start to set it up without screwing up anything I've already got set up? What is the order of priority? "hard" user, main alias, virutal user, virtual alias?

For the sake of example, "pugdog" and "postcards" are "hard" unix/qmail accounts. Each has several "catch all" aliases to send mail to them.

My machine is responding to postcards.com, digitalpostcards.com/net/org, creepycards.com/net/org, and a few others. For now, let's stick with those.

If I wanted to add virtual users to the postcards.com domain, do I screw up anything in the 'base' qmail installation with the hard users?

Does "pugdog" as a unix user override anything else?



These are the sort of questions that after you start using it, you understand, but when you are trying to set it up, these are major logic and "panic" hurdles.

:)

Thanks


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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
Huh,

I am using Qmail to, thought I would have been the only one before reading this thread... Has anyone even got sendmail isntalled =)

Michael Bray
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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
Sendmail is still widely used :)

Qmail is easier for the dedicated site to manage. I wonder what the breakdown is, and what the differences are. It looks like qmail uses more system resources -- many processes are running all the time. With features, and ease of use, comes some form of penalty.

But, the real benefit is that qmail has far fewer of the security holes of sendmail that require plugging, and require deep extreme knowledge to plug.

Overall efficiency has to be measured by standards other than just speed and system resources. Ease of use, features and security make qmail the better choice for _most_ sites.

But, there is a real lack of documentation for it, and a lack of experienced people, since it is new and "in the closet" <G>

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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
Must have missed this one!

What I would do is:

1. Shut down qmail.
2. Install vpopmail.
3. Use vdomainadd to add your 9 domains.
4. Install qmailadmin
5. Log in as postmaster for each of your domains and setup your hard accounts using create pop.
6. Then create all your aliases + autoresponders.
7. Start qmail back up.

You won't lose mail as mail will keep trying to get to you for a couple hours.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
Ok,

Here's the question:

1) How do you create the "hard" accounts over the "virtual" accounts.

2) Lets say the Unix users are "pugdog" "postcards" and "custsupp".

3) I have "postmaster" and "mailer-daemon" going to "pugdog" and "@postcards.com" going to "custsupp" to pick up everything else.

4) Then, I want to add a virtual pop account for the people who have some relationship with our site, photographers, or artists, etc. Let's call them, "richard", "walter" and "zoomer".

5) What's the difference in setting up the various users?

6) Now, with Gossamer Mail, I will change the @postcards.com to "pop_users" and pick up everything else that is not assigned.

7) Here's another question .... are Unix users automatically excluded from the Gossamer Mail system? Can userid's be blocked, so people can sign up with them?

(I'm asking some questions I _might_ know the answer to, since I know there are others who will want answers, and I'd like to know I'm on track.)

Thanks.



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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
Remove the tie between unix users and pop accounts. What I would do is add the virtual domains using vadddomain, then log on in qmailadmin. From there for postcards.com you would:

1. Create pop accounts for pugdog and custsupp
2. Make custsupp the catch all account
3. Alias mailer-daemon and postmaster to pugdog.

You could also then add any other pop account you like. For some reason web interface doesn't let you alias to remote emails, only to other pops. If you wanted to add photos@postcards.com to go to the persons real email, you just put a file called .qmail-photos in the /home/vpopmail/domains/postcards.com directory and put the email address you want to redirect to.

If you wanted to give these people pop accounts instead of just emails, then from qmailadmin just do create new pop.

Remeber, there is no tie between system/unix accounts and the mail now. So if you change your pugdog unix login, you'll need to change your mail password as well. However, this also means you don't need extra shell accounts for any extra pops you want, a better tradeoff in my opinion.

You are right for number 6, and for number 7, yes. Because the catch all will only catch email that doesn't go to an existing valid account, Gossamer Mail will never see any email address to pugdog for instance.

Hope that helps/Make sense,

Alex



--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: Qmail and Multiple Domains on a dedicated In reply to
hehe another qmail user here! I had to "pay" inter7 to install it for me, got my dedi server and needed hundreds of virtual email accounts and suddendly discovered couldn't do it.

I am looking at gossamer mail for the future, looks really good and with all this qmail support i should be sorted. GT just does everything!

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