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Need tips and advice on eCS-based mail server

Started by warpcafe, 2008.04.13, 17:57:17

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warpcafe

Hi all,

first: I don't know if that is the right forum - @moderator: move if required.

The story:
I have the chance to sell a mail server to a customer which could then be running eCS (or WSeB). They are convinced that a MS Exchange Server will not be the right solutions for their needs and that it requires too much support. Also, I don't provide support for MS Exchange (because I hate it) and they trust me 100%. Also, I don't know enough about Linux nor could I provide support for a Linux-based solution (well I could, but I don't want to)... and the 3rd party software for Windows is... well, crap mostly with some nice glitches that keep my phone ringing because the customer has no clue about servers and computers in general.

So I thought about "why not put a WSeB there?". Reliable, proven and supported by me. ;-)
The basic requirements for the machine are:
- must handle 1 or 2 shares for about 12 concurrent users (no problem...)
- must integrate with a MS SBS 2K3 (no problem...)
- and (most important) must act as a mail server (ouch! - see details)

Details:
The customer has 3 mail adresses on a pop3 server. In their office however, multiple users must access one of these 3 adresses. Users run MS Outlook of course! Contacts (adress books) should be shared by everyone too. Ideally, the pop3 server from their provider will have a "catchall" function that collects mail for all recipients matching the domain (so to say " *@my-dmain.com ") and then the "internal" mail server ("my machine") will match these to multiple internal mail accounts. But that's just a "nice to have".

Summary:
I need a piece of OS/2 software that acts like an IMAP server towards the fron-end and can interact with POP3 servers in the backend connection.

Question(s):
Is there any such "native" software that fits the above mail requirements? zxmail? weasel?
Is that server compatible with MS outlook clients?
How to configure?
Is that software actively developed and supported?
Does it have an interface to anti virus (user-exit based scripts + clamav...?)
Does it support/provide a functional, non-cpu-hogging spam filtering?
Is it able to run 24/24, 7/7 without requiring cleanup-reboots?
BTW: Price doesn't matter. ;-)
For the rest (networking, shares, MS net integration) I don't need help - it's just for the mail server stuff.

Alternatives I could think of:
If there is no native solution, is there something java-based?
How about something based on Apache/MySQL/PHP? like the Horde framework... would that work in the given circumstances and requirements? Who has experience with that?

Thanks and regards,
Thomas
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority.
By definition, there are already enough people to do that"
- G.H. Hardy

jep

A1) Weasel
A2) Yes, as far as i know
     Only used it, not tested the new Beta IMAP though.
A3) Buy the Pro version and mark IMAP, add users and password, set cram_md5 as authentication and you're safe.
     So easy even i figured it out ( http://www.pmoylan.org/pages/os2/weaselss.html )
A4) Yes, the new version came out only months ago
A5) Yes, there's a page where you can configure different filters that run scripts and apps. There's a quite simpel rexx script to scan individual messages with ClamAv
A6) There's no built in spam filter software provided, you may want to add that yourself as rexx scripts. The same goes if you want Greylisting. I think the author is open to suggestions though.
A7) Mine does run 24/7 on an old PII 400 MHz machine
A8) Without IMAP, 0$, with IMAP and Pro features a few $

//Jan-Erik

warpcafe

Hi Jan-Erik,

thanks a lot - will check with Peter for details!

Regards,
Thomas
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority.
By definition, there are already enough people to do that"
- G.H. Hardy

herwigb

Just an addition if the clients are Windows XP machines you might eventually want to investigate into the Samba server for eCS (OS/2) instead of WSeB.

I have a very similar scenario here and Samba is definitely faster than WseB on the same hardware and stability is good. Setup isn't that easy however. Running Windows XP clients against a Samba Server gives me less headache than I had with WSeB.

My mailserver is ZXMail, which was a very good software, but is unsupported now and therefore probably not a good solution anymore for the future. I also have the intention to move away from it, as an inhouse IMAP server would be desirable, too.

An interesting software regarding the mailserver would be CommunigatePro, which is free for 5 users, but very expensive for more (I'd have to buy a 25 users license for several hundred bucks for 8 users...). Their license model simply sucks.

Otherwise I am also looking at Weasel Pro.

The exotic alternative would be the University of Washington server ports, which also have been updated recently, but these are very unixish, which isn't an advantage in my POV.

Kind regards,
Herwig
Kind regards,
HerwigB.

melf

Hi Thomas, don't know if this is of interest for you but here is a post about a possible mailserver: http://news.ecomstation.com/article.php?id=13436&group=ecomstation.apps#13436
/Mikael

warpcafe

Hej melf,

thanks! I already went through it today right when I saw the news... but the Alpine itself is only a client IIRC and the Wshington.edu servers are those who are too much unixish for me ;). And I'm afraid they were done by people who take RFCs as bibles without "allowing" to support non-rfc-compliant ...ehhh... "extensions" so to say (the stuff how Microsoft interprets standards...).
I definitely need something non-Windows which FULLY supports Windows. ;)
Anyway, thanks a lot for reminding!!

Regards,
Thomas
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority.
By definition, there are already enough people to do that"
- G.H. Hardy

RobertM

Hi Thomas,

IIRC, there is an Alpine Server now as well... if that isnt the article with the link, then it was posted on the same day in a separate article...

Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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DavidG

Here is what he stated in the newsgroups today.

Hi all.

This is to announce that Alpine v1.10 is now available for OS/2 and
eComStation, along with the corresponding versions of the University
of Washington's POP3 and IMAP servers.

This release includes fixes for several bugs in the OS/2 versions of
Alpine and Pico, in additon to changes made by the University of
Washington that you can read about according to the announcement
forwarded below.

I'm also interested in whether or not there is any interest in a web
mail server for OS/2 and eComStation. The Alpine source code includes
a webmail server ("Web Alpine") that I have not yet attempted to port,
but if there's interest I can try it. I can't guarantee it'll work but
who knows.

You can find further information at:

    http://www.zeta.org.au/~nps/software/alpine/en/index.html


    Nick S.



RobertM

Quote from: David Graser on 2008.04.18, 03:39:10
Here is what he stated in the newsgroups today.

Hi all....

...along with the corresponding versions of the University
of Washington's POP3 and IMAP servers....

Located here... thanks David for finding it!!!
http://www.zeta.org.au/~nps/software/alpine/en/imapd.html

Thomas, if you give it a try, let us know how it works and what you think of it!

Thanks,
Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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warpcafe

Hi all,

thanks for all your support and interest in this topic.
I can't tell exactly when I'll be able to give it a try, as I can only find some time for that during the day, which means when I only have windows machines around... unless a miracle happens and I'm able to get around the resource.sys trap D with eCS in virtualbox. ;)

Cheers, again thanks,
Thomas
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority.
By definition, there are already enough people to do that"
- G.H. Hardy

warpcafe

Hi all, short update:

I took some time and went through the Weasel docs. Some properties of it are (or seem to be) exactly what I need while others keep puzzling me to a point where I am unsure if that is a practical approach in the scenario I have. And, there's some additional details I would like to know...
...so I sent an email to Peter Moylan a week ago but didn't get a response so far. Either he's on leave or my mail was accidentially regarded as SPAM. Will wait a little and then get back on him.

The thing is that the main questions are around mail relaying and I can only "check if it works" in the special scenario of my customer and his infrastructure. But then, I would risk to have mails being lost or corrupted when I find out that Weasel doesn't fit the need and have to switch back to the previous solution... too much "if"s and "how"s for a safe and sound feeling that what I give them really works. I would prefer to get my questions answered upfront the hardware and software rollout...

Will keep you updated folks,
Thomas
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority.
By definition, there are already enough people to do that"
- G.H. Hardy

jep

Hello,

Peter answered me quite fast when I had problems and fixed it almost faster  :D

A note though, Weasel doesn't handle "winmail.dat" files, you have to add support for that separately afaik.

You can find version 1.2.0 of tnef on hobbes if you want/need to.

//Jan-Erik