[LONG SUMMARY] opionions on in-house unix based mail systems

From: Jerry Kemp - Sun account <sun_at_sun.twlight.net>
Date: Mon Jul 02 2001 - 11:16:21 EDT
Hello Sun Managers,

Here is my summary of replies into unix based mail servers.  I had quite 
a few
comments on both Lotus Notes and the I-Planet software, along with 
several "try
and fix your exchange server" and a couple of mail servers my research 
before
posting the question did not turn up.  And, only one vacation message, 
so that
appears to be getting better.  I also want to thank the following people 
who
sent their experiences to me as posted below, plus anyone I forgot:

Eric Watson
Suresh Rajagopalan
Dave Brady
Toby A. Rider
Eric De Mund
Clements, Ian
Dan.Anderson
Chris Cariffe
Phil Brutsche
Michael DeSimone
David Meissner
Edwin Groenescheij
Kevin Colagio
Ric Anderson
Eric Shafto
Arvinder_Dadhwal
Hendrik Visage
Clift Robert T CONT DLVA
Bruce Cannon
Jeff Kennedy
Tim Chipman
John Marrett
Mika Tuupola
Jernej Zajc


Am Thursday, 28. June 2001 um 16:08 schrieb Jerry Kemp - Sun account:
++++++++++++++++++
ORIGINAL QUESTION
++++++++++++++++++

> Hello Sun managers,
>
> I am currently started working in a small IT consulting company 
> performing consulting
> services performing unix and network based solutions.  Currently, we 
> have a winblows/
> exchange mail system in-house. Management felt that experience with 
> this software was
> important as many of our customers are using it. As I am sure everyone 
> on the list can
>  probably guess, micro$oft does not make the most robust mail system 
> and it is down as
> much as it is up.
>
> Yesterday, my boss had had enough of the ms mail system and approached 
> me about upgrading
> to a unix based in-house mail system.  Immediately, thoughts of glee 
> filled my head
> and the possibility of bringing another Sun box in house and loading up 
> the latest
> copy of SENDMAIL and IMAP.
>
> Unfortunately, I quickly realized that this system will not only be 
> used by techies
> but also sales people, management and secretaries who want/need fancy 
> formatting, fonts,
> colors, calendars, address books, etc....  I can not present a solution 
> that will cause
> these people to loose these features that they already have.
>
> So, to the point, I am curious what Unix server based email systems the 
> group is
> using in house and if you would recommend it to someone else.  I do 
> believe that
> Lotus makes a version of Notes for Solaris and that Netscape has Suite 
> Spot, or
> what ever it is being called now.  But I don't have experience with 
> these, hence
> this request for your experience.
>
> TIA for any positive emails, I will post a summary.
>

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


I think with Sendmail + IMAP + LDAP you can get most of the 
functionality.

Global address lists would be available via LDAP. It is not the same as
with exchange, but should suffice.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  I feel your pain.  I came from a sendmail/IMAP environment, and am now
stuck using Lotus Notes on my Sun.

   It is, without a doubt, the *worst* e-mail client I have ever used.  
The
Microsoft Windows client might be better, but the Solaris one is a piece 
of
junk.

   It will occassionally freeze your window manager.  It will suck the 
color
palette dry.  It has *no* filtering capability (that I can find;  I miss
procmail!), and rigidly controls message composition.  (Ex. The line with
your name at the top is not editable or removable.)  You don't have
permission to create other folders.  Keyboard control is nil.  You must 
use
the mouse for almost everything.

   It's atrocious.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is what I have done at 3 different places. Use an Exchange
server for the calendaring, etc.. and make it forward smtp to The Sun box
running Qmail, sendmail, postfix, or whatever MTA you like.
	The users can then pop or imap their mail off the Unix box. You
can give them the option of storing their mail on the server. Then you
can then write some scripts to email them when they have too much mail
saved on the mail server.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Count me as a "me too"; I'd also like to know this. If you send out a
summary email, I'd appreciate a copy.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Sounds like you have a bunch of people running windows
clients already. Just convert them back to Internet Mail
Service and have them use IMAP on their Windows clients.
This way, they keep most of the features you want (except
calendaring and the other crap but that's easily solved with
Meeting Maker or Synchronize.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Notes is alright.

I still protect/support mine with a little solaris/sendmail mx  server
though.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

i have installed and used netscape or i-planet stuff.  i would recommend
this.  ease of use and install as well!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Nor does it work worth a crap when it is up :)  Seems like most of the
mail system interaction problems I run across at work are caused by MS
Exchange.

I won't tell you the horror stories I've heard out of some universities
what switched to Exchange...

Yesterday, my boss had had enough of the ms mail system and approached
me about upgrading to a unix based in-house mail system.
Immediately, thoughts of glee filled my head and the possibility of
bringing another Sun box in house and loading up the latest copy of
SENDMAIL and IMAP.

Sendmail?

Exim (or Postfix) + Courier IMAP, baby :)

Unfortunately, I quickly realized that this system will not only be
used by techies but also sales people, management and secretaries who
want/need fancy formatting, fonts, colors, calendars, address books,
etc....  I can not present a solution that will cause these people to
loose these features that they already have.

The "fancy formatting" (fonts, colors, etc) generally is not a problem -
that's just HTML email, and is well supported by at least the 4 or 5
Windows email clients I can name right off the top of my head (OE,
Outlook, Netscape, Pegasus, Eudora).  Sendmail (or whatever MTA you use)
won't be able to tell whether the message has formatting or not, nor will
it care.  It's all just text; what the email client does with that text 
is
what makes the difference.

You might be able to replace the address book functionality with LDAP, 
but
it won't work anything like what the others at your company are used to.

There are a number of third-party schedule mechanisms.

One of the things people like about Outlook+Exchange is it's ability to
integrate all that functionality into one interface.

So, to the point, I am curious what Unix server based email systems
the group is using in house and if you would recommend it to someone
else.  I do believe that Lotus makes a version of Notes for Solaris
and that Netscape has Suite Spot, or what ever it is being called now.
But I don't have experience with these, hence this request for your
experience.

I would say Lotus Notes.  HP's OpenMail *might* be an option, but I
wouldn't want anyone else to subject themselves to that particular hell,
and HP is dropping support for it anyways.

I don't know anything about Suite Spot.

What we use in house: Exim + UofW IMAP + OpenLDAP.  We have no need to
share schedules/calanders.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Intermail (now openwave mail)  or post.off from (what was software.com ) 
and
is now http://www.openwave.com/
look in products Communication Services and Additional products. Netscape
stuff is OK as well.

Non techies can still use Outlook and send and make appointments, just 
not
see other's calendars. No out of the box Global address book either. The
rest of that stuff is client based and they can still do.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I love Unix and I use it for everything that I can, including my own 
mail,
but it's too much to ask of people to give up an e-mail system that 
they're
used to and perhaps comfortable with. It's pretty painful for regular 
users
to switch from Exchange to Notes, or to a Unix-based system. Exchange 
can be
stable enough for a small company despite the occasional reboots and the
difficulty of doing restores. My advice is to put some resources into
stabilizing your Exchange installation. Perhaps reinstall it on better
hardware, upgrade to the latest version, etc.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

You might wanna download the iPlanet Messaging Server 5.1 and
the iPlanet Calendar Server 5.0 (evaluation versions available
from http://www.iplanet.com/).
I have installed iMS 5.0 for an ISP in Australia and it works
quite well although we ran into some bugs, version 5.1 seems
to have solved most of the bugs. In combination with iPlanet
Delegated Administrator even MCSE's are able to create domains,
e-mail users, mailing lists etc etc.
About 6 months ago I played a bit with a beta version of iCS 5.0
it looked very good but haven't done a real install for a
customer yet.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Simply put, let everyone use it as a pop or IMAP server....their
client end will interpret everything as it should, and the Unix
backend (with sendmail) won't care.

Sendmail delivers to a Unix mailbox.  Pop clients (and IMAP I
think...no real experience there) can just look at the server's
mailboxes and interpret what they see there.  Sendmail doesn't care
about content...only the clients do.

Hope that helps, now go get a decent new Sun box with the latest
version of Sendmail!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Where I work we use UW's imap client with sendmail.  Desktop users
(mostly windows 2000) use Outlook and its address book or
netscape and its address book.  Calendering is done via a
program called meeting maker (http://www.meetingmaker.com)
which runs on a novell or windows server (I forget which, as
its run by another group).

This combo gives the PC folks a nice GUI interface, and (if
they use netscape) palm pilot/visor conduits for address books.
Meeting Maker also includes a Palm conduit.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

You can still use Outlook (bleah) as your mail client if you're not 
using an Exchange server.  You'll lose some nice features, like the 
ability to retract messages before they've been read, group calendaring, 
etc.  Outlook (Outlook 2000, anyway) is very comfortable using rtf to 
send richly-formatted email, and there should be no problems sending 
that through a standard smtp server.

If you're willing to spend a reasonably small amount of money, I might 
suggest Communigate Pro.  It's a dream to set up and manage, it provides 
a decent web-mail interface, handles pop and imap, along with their 
secure variants, and it's rock-solid.  I understand that it scales well, 
too, but I never used it for more than like 500 accounts.

If you want to go the hard way but you're not a masochist, consider 
qmail, which is simpler to set up than Sendmail, also free, reasonably 
well supported, and is written beautifully.  Well, efficiently and 
securely, anyway.  You'll have to add your own imap server, but there 
are how-to's for that.  I did it with Cyrus and it didn't take me more 
than a day to integrate them, and most of that was reading FAQ's.

qmail's got a couple of stupid gotchas, though, so do read all the 
readme's or you'll spend time banging your head unnecessarily.

Or just install sendmail.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Okay, so why not Groupwise?  Great product, full-featured, admittedly a 
bear to administer, but not nearly as bad as Exchange.  You won't get 
what you want from a straightup smtp server, although I did move people 
happily from Exchange to a combination of Communigate Pro (see my 
previous email) and WebEvent, which is a nice shared web calendar.  
Doesn't do the really cool stuff like scheduling meetings, but it was 
for a school and they really needed more of a community calendar.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Lotus Notes do make it for solaris too. I have worked on Notes on NT, 
administering them and it has been great working on it. Here one of our 
client has Notes riding on AIX RS/6000 and it's working absolutely fine 
with no major problems. Administering Notes is a breeze compared to 
Exchange.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Let's start at the begining:

Email:
  Setup Qmail/postfix/sendmail etc. as MTA (Your choice depends on logging
features, speed and ease of config)
  Make use of imap/pop3 for the connection from server to client. The
"Fancy formating and Word Documents" will only be a problem for the 
people
reading/writing email on text based consoles (ie. Mutt ;^), but Netscape
as well as Outlook (express also) supports the sending of MIME and
HTML formatted email.

Calendering:
  This is the "tough one". The issue here is that M$ did some thinking by
integrating email & calendering, for this integration you'll have to 
start
looking at Notes etc. However, NEtscape do have a Calendering solution
available.

Address book:
  Netscape do provide that (WIfe using it @home). SOmething that's 
"interesting"
about M$'s exchange, is that the adress book is accessible via LDAP 
(using it
@work to get ext numbers from exchange while on a Unix server :)

That said, DO take a look at freshmeat.net, there are quite a few browser
based options available that do have some integration of it all.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

check out StarOffice.....

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

An optimized solution for an enterprise, including enterprise 
calendaring,
shareable calendars and mail/message folders and other conveniences 
that I
have implemented has been a (Sun-based, but Linux will work) sendmail 
box in
the DMZ with aliases for all the users, and the Exchange server on the 
LAN,
or in the LAN Servers segment setup to use the sendmail box for internet
mail.  Putting an Exchange server, even behind a firewall, out on the
internet is a tempting target.  Also, you'll find that on the rare 
occasions
your Exchange server hangs, the mail for your users will still be in the
sendmail box, and will dump its queue to the Exchange server as soon as 
it
comes back up.  A proper implementation of Exchange is very, very 
reliable.
The Williams Companies have an enterprise-wide deployment that has been
working with no unscheduled downtime for years.  The sendmail frontend is
the secret.  And a lot less painful than migrating users!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

alas, it comes down to this:

fully integrated "messaging solutions" that include email / calendar /
task management with "groupware" capacity to boot are rather more
limited in abundance than straightforward email (POP or IMAP) based
solutions.

Of course, stuff like "fonts, formatting, colours" are *purely* an issue
of what E-mail client the person is using. A vanilla POP / SMTP mail
server can be used by Eudora, Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape
Messenger (or whatever mail client you want, really) and send "HTML /
RTF" email message content that is very "pretty" - with fancy fonts,
in-line images / background images, etc etc..

The difficult bit comes along when users demand fully integrated
calendar, messaging, task management. Currently, Microsoft has a big
edge here since they were in the game quite early with their solution.
And of course that all the other "groupware" solutions suck. :-) [or
have had this problem in the past :-) ]

Sun / Netscape do offer "SIMS", a more-or-less integrated messaging
system (email, calendar groupware with some task management) but last
time I checked it wasn't perfectly clear to me how well integrated
things really were, or what variety of client software was available for
this setup.

Everything I've ever heard about Lotus Notes/Domino has *always*
screamed "WARNING! RUN AWAY NOW! DO NOT LOOK BACK!" -- I've heard tales
of horrible stability with the server-side software, let alone the
horrible, bloated lotus notes client software. (Lotus notes is really an
"Enterprise database management system" that allows fully paperless
office type function - and which has the capacity of email, calendaring,
groupware -- but it does SO many other things as well .. that if you
don't need those extra functions .. be warned ..

There are also options with Novell Groupwise, although I am told it has
real scaling problems as well once you get over a certain user base size
(ie, more than one "post office" system).

As an aside: I *hate* to say it - but: what version of exchange are you
using, running on what flavour of Windows? If you are not using Windows
2000 .. that is a huge upgrade waiting to happen. Although I think MS is
evil in many ways, it cannot be denied that Win2K is a big step up from
WinNT4 in many ways. Likewise, I believe that the newest version of
Exchange is a major improvement over the NT4 era version of exchange..
so you may want to (have to?) consider this as an option if you are not
already running the "newest and greatest" flavour of Exchange/Windows.

Ultimately - it may come down to more of a "management decision" in
terms of deciding between (high stability and therefore NOT MS ; however
fewer groupware features - but good IMAP, SMTP) vs (Abundant groupware
features and thus Microsoft).

BTW: IMHO Postfix is a much better SMTP server than Sendmail
(www.postfix.org) - however I won't try to start a holy war with such a
topic here :-)


Anyhow. I hope this little blathering rant is of some use. I'll be very
interested to hear what you find out at the end of the day..

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Intrested in replacing exchange using a drop in replacement?

Check out http://www.openmail.com.

I understand HP is planning to kill this product after the next
revision. Apparently due to pressure from microsoft.

Supposed to be a very interesting product though...

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I have had a bit same kind of situation as you do. Some people
	insisting on having Exchange because of its calendaring
	features etc. Since Exchange is not an option to anyone who
	is an admin I wouldnt install it.

	What I have ended up doing is runnind Sendmail as MTA, Cyrus
	as IMAP / POP3 server and Steltors (ex CST) Corporate Time
	Server as Calendaring server.

	I use Sendmail for two main reasons. I have best experience
	with it, and I dislike qmail. Postfix could be an option
	though.

	Main reason for choosing cyrus was speed. It also handles
	huge emails (our people are sending and receiving huge
	attachments via email) really well. You can build a sealed
	system with cyrus since mailboxes dont need to have corresponding
	unix accounts.

	Before I installed Cyrus I was warned it was going to be
	a complicated install. However I think it went together
	pretty easily.

	Cyrus can be found at:

		http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/imapd/

	Corporate Time is basically what makes this system pretty
	much the same as Exhcange to end user (only this time realiable).
	CTime provide the calendaring functions. It has native clients	
	for Windows, MacOS and even Motif. It also has a webclient and
	it can be used via Outlook (you need to install Corporate Time
	Outlook Connector). To enduser this is just like using
	the exhange calendar. More bonuses is possibility of syncing
	your calendar data to Palm, Pocket PC, WIN CE and Psion
	handhelds. CTime accounts can be stored in internal database
	or fetched over network from LDAP server.

	The install was clean and worked straight out (which I was
	surprised since I have had some bad experiences with commercial
	software installs on unix).

	Check Steltors website for more info:

		http://www.steltor.com/

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Just a thought: a standard unix MTA like qmail/postfix, "rich"
mail could be HTML mail that many graphical mailers understand
and calendar app could be database driven groupware accessible
through PHP from web browser.

The first out of dozen solutions from the top of my head.
Received on Mon Jul 2 16:16:21 2001

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