[imp] IMP: How can you retrieve mail from multiple backend servers?

[Robert Kubarych]

We are trying to develop a scalable webmail system similar to the system
outlined at  <http://www.horde.org/papers/Scalable_webmail_HOWTO.php>
http://www.horde.org/papers/Scalable_webmail_HOWTO.php.  To quote the
article:

 

The bulk of the scalability comes from  <http://www.postfix.org>
postfix's ability to forward mail to another user or machine based upon
the maildrop attribute of an  <http://www.openldap.org> LDAP server. All
that needed to be done is to use a full email address for the maildrop
attribute, which pointed to the machine that the user's mail was
actually hosted on. For instance, if the DNS MX record points to the
frontend mailserver of mail.dom.ain, and  <http://www.openldap.org> LDAP
says to maildrop user at dom.ain to user at machine44.dom.ain, then
<http://www.postfix.org> postfix running on the front end mail server
will forward mail for that user to machine44. With feature alone, you
can have unlimited mail accounts in your domain. All you have to do is
keep adding boxes to the back end.  We'll be using sendmail instead of
postfix, but that's not material.

 

The article goes on to explain how to patch IMP so that it retrieves the
mail server machine name from LDAP, instead of relying on the
configuration setting and a single mail server.  It says that of August
5, 1999 these patches are no longer necessary, but I'm not sure what
needs to be changed in the IMP configuration files (and which ones) to
do this.   We are using IMP 3.1.

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Rob 

 

Robert K. Kubarych

(201) 612-5591