On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 6:42 PM, Ben McGinnes ben@adversary.org wrote:

On 8/11/10 7:30 PM, ahmad riza h nst wrote:

...

hello,

i need to setup a mail server with postfix + dovecot + webmin + virtualmin + virtual user with linux system user. the virtual user may reach to thousands user from several hundreds virtual domains.

That shouldn't be a problem.  Postfix has had support for this for well over a decade.

...

what i concern is large numbers of linux system user which used in these setup, is it good or bad?

Virtual users with a Postfix/Dovecot installation does not equate to real Linux/shell accounts.  If the only service being provided is mail, then there's no reason to create real accounts.

Ben,

the problem is we would use webmin + virtualmin as an interface for costumers to manage their domain (mainly emails) on the server and virtualmin don't use/support mysql + vpopmail yet, at least that what i understand at this moment.

virtualmin choose to use unix system user with postfix, so if i create an email then it create one unix system user too, this is what i'm concern, since i don't have any information about what happen to linux/centos if these unix system user growing bigger and bigger to reach some thousands users for an example.

...

maybe somebody would share their experience about this setup ?

any links would be good.

postfix 2.6.7 dovecot 2.0.6 centos 5.x

Is there any particular reason you've chosen these versions?  That is, are there specific functions which these versions provide that are not in prior versions?

I ask because I'm running these versions in CentOS 5.x:

postfix-2.3.3-2.1.el5_2.i386 dovecot-1.0.7-7.el5.i386

If the only concern is security updates, these are backported to the current versions in CentOS.

no particular reason, i just new to postfix, currently i'm qmail + vpopmail admin. i read on postfix and dovecot website about latest stable release and i installed from source :) i know that centos have postfix + dovecot + mysql as a rpm package.

...

webmin + virtualmin

I've had no experience with either of these as I edit the config files with a text editor.

these webmin + virtualmin mainly for user interface to manage their domain on the server (just like control panel on hosting server)

Regards, Ben

-- Ben McGinnes  http://www.adversary.org/  Twitter: benmcginnes    Systems Administrator, Writer, ICT Consultant Encrypted email preferred - primary OpenPGP/GPG key: 0xA04AE313 http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x371AC5BFA04AE313

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On 8/11/10 11:54 PM, ahmad riza h nst wrote:

the problem is we would use webmin + virtualmin as an interface for costumers to manage their domain (mainly emails) on the server and virtualmin don't use/support mysql + vpopmail yet, at least that what i understand at this moment.

virtualmin choose to use unix system user with postfix, so if i create an email then it create one unix system user too, this is what i'm concern, since i don't have any information about what happen to linux/centos if these unix system user growing bigger and bigger to reach some thousands users for an example.

Assuming that Virtualmin doesn't have support for real virtual users or redirecting to MySQL for that then you have three basic choices:

1a) Use a different management interface for managing the Postfix/Dovecot configuration.

1b) Write your own extension for Virtualmin which provides this functionality (essentially a variation on 1a).

2) Stick with the existing mail server configuration which already works with Webmin and Virtualmin.

3) Create user accounts that do not provide an actual shell account (e.g. /bin/noshell).

With the number of domains and users you're looking at, this could be a real problem, especially when the usernames might conflict between different domains.

If I were in your position I'd be looking at either 1a or 1b.

Regards, Ben

On 11/8/2010 1:20 PM, Mike Fedyk wrote:

On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 7:25 AM, Ben McGinnesben@adversary.org wrote:

...

Assuming that Virtualmin doesn't have support for real virtual users or redirecting to MySQL for that then you have three basic choices:

1a) Use a different management interface for managing the Postfix/Dovecot configuration.

1b) Write your own extension for Virtualmin which provides this functionality (essentially a variation on 1a).

2. Stick with the existing mail server configuration which already

works with Webmin and Virtualmin.

3. Create user accounts that do not provide an actual shell account

(e.g. /bin/noshell).

With the number of domains and users you're looking at, this could be a real problem, especially when the usernames might conflict between different domains.

Unless you encode the domain in the username of the unix user. "user#domain"

I quite like the idea of having separate UIDs for each user. Let the OS work for you...

Or if you are really concerned about scaling beyond what the OS handles gracefully, you might want to look at cyrus instead of dovecot as the mail backend. I think ClearOS has a web-manged setup, but I'm not sure how they relate email users to system users.