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Re: selecting a new mail server



On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, John DiMarco wrote:

> In message <20000823175049.F1060@cs.ualberta.ca>you write:
> >There is an opportunity to upgrade our mail machine
> >which is currently a Sun SS5/170 running SunOS4.1.4
> >running Zmailer 2.99.51.
> >
> >A couple of alternatives are Sun/Solaris or PC/Linux
> >setups. I suspect either would work fine.
> 
> ...
> 
> >Mail is picked up by NFS,  with an increasing use of
> >pop and imap servers. Daily traffic is a few 10s of
> >thousands of messages comprising a very few 100s of
> >MB of filespace.  
> 
> There are no major differences re: zmailer, as far as I know, but Linux NFS
> is dreadful.   Use Solaris or one of the BSDs.

Hi John,

While it is true that the kernel based NFS under Linux is (still) weak,
the userland version works just fine for us. We run a 160 GB RAID disk
off a dual SMP Linux bax out to approx 250 unix hosts (nfs) and 50 or
so Win boxs (samba) in the dept without problems with decent response
times. The disk contains all user $HOME's, the mail spool, and
common application binaries for various architectures.

knfs was stripped out and ol'faithful userland nfs used instead.

Traffic stats for the machine (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) can be
viewed at:

	http://relay.phys.ualberta.ca:80/lan/3com3-5.html

Cheers,
--
James S. MacKinnon           Office: P-139 Avadh-Bhatia Physics Lab
Team Physics                 Voice : (780) 492-8226 [old AC 403]
University of Alberta        email : Jim.MacKinnon@Phys.UAlberta.CA
Edmonton, Canada T6G 2N5     WWW   : http://www.phys.ualberta.ca/

for all that we know the universe could cease to exist at any mo