Horde/IMP versus Squirrelmail

[Francois Dion]

>From: ncsa-discussion-bounces at ncsysadmin.org
[mailto:ncsa-discussion-bounces at ncsysadmin.org] On Behalf Of Jeff The
Riffer

>I'm helping build the new maple for my little gang of friends (maple as
in the server, not the app), and convinced the partner-in-crime to do
>Linux instead of OpenBSD.

Another option is Solaris 10. You wont have to upgrade the OS as
regularly (Fedora core has a fairly aggressive cycle) and it has IPF out
of the box, and zones which allow you to set up your web facing stuff
under its own "server" and you can even reboot a zone without affecting
any other zone (altough with Sol 10 you don't need to reboot unless you
are adding hardware that is not hot swap). I've been running Sol 10
(initially in Express form) for over a year now without issues.

If you look into Sol 10 (x86 version, free download at
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp ), Squirrelmail is but a
command away:
pkg-get -I squirrelm
(after installing http://www.blastwave.org/pkg_get.pkg )

Similarly, postfix, spamassasin, courier, amavis, clamav etc can be
installed from pkg-get.

>So now I'm trying to decide if I should install Horde/IMP on the new
box (FC3), or try out Squirrelmail. Any suggestions? This is for a small
>group of no more than a couple of dozen users, though many of them are
quite e-mail active.

For years, a good distro for what you are wanting to do was SME
(e-smith, then Mitel). Automated updates of security patches, virus defs
etc. It took about 10 minutes to install and it came up with Horde/IMP
and all the other stuff you'd want for email/web/ftp (in stand alone
mode, behind a real firewall). You might have needed to manage it 1-2
hours per year. I used it a bit for people I knew didn't have time or
skills to manage their servers. I would always replace Horde/IMP due to
the interface tough. Eventually, they incorporated webmail which was way
better. I like webmail personally.

Then Mitel dropped the ball on the free version. The $$ version is still
available I think. The free version is now supported by a ragtag group,
found at contribs.org. Cant really recommend that now, but I've seen
large group of users handled by a single cpu (600MHz to 900MHz) server
(with a pair of scsi drives), with qmail,webmail,spamassasin,clamav etc.
in many large enterprises.

Squirrelmail is easier to manage if you are not running a specialised
distribution like that, but do investigate webmail (it does require a
little more horsepower).

BTW, what kind of hardware are you going to be running this on?

Francois