[ale] Cyrus -vs- Washington IMAP (and any others)

Chris Ricker kaboom at gatech.edu
Thu Sep 23 12:37:41 EDT 2004


On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Nathan J. Underwood wrote:

> I'm in the process of replacing an NT4 / Exchange network with a *nix 
> (Linux, Samba, <mail server>) backend, and I'm to the mail stuff now. 
> It's going to be a Fedora setup, and I would really prefer to stick with 
> RPM packages rather than source so that updates can be handled (as much 
> as possible) via apt or yum.  I've used sendmail and qmail in the past, 
> and would prefer to use qmail (don't get me started on sendmail), but 
> I've not been able to find a qmail rpm.  Postfix looks like the next 
> best thing, so I've been tinkering with it (2 config files so far, I 
> love that) as an MTA.  Since they'll be moving from an Exchange world, 
> and they're used to never having to delete anything (again, don't get me 
> started) and being able to get access to the same 'picture' of their 
> mail from multiple locations (office, home, webmail), I believe IMAP 
> would be a better option than POP3.  They will have 3 servers when it's 
> all said and done, one will be the primary file server and acting PDC 
> (Samba 3 + LDAP), the other two will function as primary / secondary DNS 
> and DHCP servers, and the secondary will also function as a BDC 
> (slurpd).  In looking at available IMAP servers, it looks like 
> Washington and Cyrus are the two main players.  The big advantage of 
> Cyrus over Washington appears to be that there isn't a need for a local 
> account, which isn't really a big deal since all mail users will have 
> local accounts.  Any thoughts?  Should I consider Washington, or drive 
> on with Cyrus?  Any other input / suggestions would also be appreciated. 
>  I'm looking at using a SpamAssassin / ClamAV combo for av and anti-spam.

Given your criteria, I'd say go with Postfix for the MTA

For the IMAP, go with Dovecot if you want simple (in other words, same
feature space as University of Washington IMAP). If you want a little more
enterprise-oriented feature set, and are willing to learn it, go with Cyrus.

later,
chris



More information about the Ale mailing list