[horde] MailServer Configuration

[Eric Rostetter]

Quoting Krishna <Krishna_shekhar at gmx.net>:

> Hi,
>         Finally I got a working MailServer with Horde/IMP cvs , IMAP with
> sendmail,MailScanner(Trend Micro) and Spamassassin with a couple of other
> horde modules.
> 
> Now , I have to use this for 10,000 users. I am planning to use a 120Gb HDD
> with 512Mb RAM and AMD1.6Gb Processor.

That should work, but isn't optimal.  Depends on your load.  Most likely
you'll get buy with that.  If not, try adding more memory.  The disk will
be slow, but more memory will provide cache for the disk and speed it all 
up.

> I am thinking to use /var for 40Gb and 1Gb for swapfile.

40GB for /var, assuming it will hold /var/spool/mail also, and that you
will leave mail there instead of moving it to /home, is about the minimum.
I'd say use 4GB per 1000 users as the minimum disk space for your mail
store.  So, you're right there, but that isn't even counting the rest of
/var (logs, etc).  So unless you know your users will have only really small
mail stores (like quotas to enforce that) I'd say up that space.

> Can anyone highlight on what partition scheme should I use for this capacity?

Not sure what you mean here...

> Is it OK that I authenticate users via passwd and shadow file? which might
> cause too many home directories and a long passwd file???

Are the user's able to do anything exept mail?  (login, ftp, file storage,
etc)?  Will mail be stored in /home or /var/spool/mail or elsewhere.
Really need to know.

Most times your passwd/shadow file will get cached in memory, so it won't
matter too much how long it is.  Yes, it will be slow, but not really a
problem.  I've run machines with passwd/shadow with 20K or 30K users
before without performance issues (but with fast raid disks, raid cache,
and lots of memory, none of which you have.... None the less, I think you
will be fine with passwd files if you want to go that way).

-- 
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin

Why get even? Get odd!