[CentOS] Planning Mail Server (with low resources)

Karanbir Singh mail-lists at karan.org
Tue Dec 6 03:56:50 UTC 2005


Rodrigo Barbosa wrote:
>>I'm planning the installation of the school's Mail Server. This is the
>>first time I get in administration. I've been reading about postfix,
>>cyrus  and the first page in the guide of HughesJR.com[2] about
>>installing postfix-cyrus, but due my low hardware resources, I ask for
>>suggestions to see If what I need can be done (and|or) stable.
>>
>>Hardware:
>>Pentium III 1.4Ghz
>>256 RAM
>>40 GB HD-IDE
>>
>>Soft:
>>CentOS 4.2
>>Postfix
>>Cyrus-IMAPd
>>MailScanner
>>Spanassassin
> 
> 
> First off, dump either antivirus or antispam on that machine. You
> don't have enough memory to keep both happy.

How about using MailScanner ? and wrap that around clamav + 
spamassassin, you can run it with 2 - 4 threads on a machine with 
256megs of ram, and since spamassassin runs via its perl interface 
locally ( and not via spamd ), it uses up no resources while its not 
running.

MailScanner might slow your inbound mail queue processing by a few 
seconds, but would allow you to better manage the resources you have on 
the machine ( and also implement any policy based email rules you might 
want to have )

> A P3 1.4GHz is more than up to the task, so you will have no problem there.
> 
> You might also want to change Cyrus-imapd to something simpler, like
> wu-imapd, since it should take less resources from the machine. Then again,
> I have very little experience with cyrus, since I either use wu or courrier.

With 2000 users and 80+ concurrent users, you will find Cyrus performs 
faster with lower system resources than Wu-imap or Dovecot!

Also, on a machine with that setup, I'd have a Gig of Swap. And that 
40GB hdd, i wonder how fast that runs :) might end up being the bottle 
neck in the equation.

- K



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