New Server Tasks

[Soren Hansen]

On Thu, Sep 20, 2007 at 11:23:13AM +0200, Nicolas Barcet wrote:
> Short term :
> a/ is there a good reason why spamd and clamd (or other similar tools)
> are not part of the mail server task at this point ?

Neither are in main at this point, and anything in the tasks must be in
main. For Hardy we need to discuss which of these solutions we are
comfortable supporting for 5 years (which is the scaring bit).

> I can barely imagine someone running a mail server nowdays without some
> kind of anti spam/anti virus nowdays...

Agreed.

> b/ what is the reasoning behind including mutt and no webmail ? 

There's no webmail client in main AFAICS, so we need to look at the
available options and figure out which one we feel comfortable
supporting for quite a few years to come.

Also, mutt (along with mailx) servers as good tools for testing when
you're setting up a mail server.

> Roundcube has been mentionned yesterday on IRC but I have been running
> it for a little while and think it is a bit too young just yet.  Would
> rather recommend squirelmail.

I've never really liked squirrelmail, but then again, I've never really
liked *any* webmail client. I can live with roundcubemail, but even that
annoys me. Setting up an imap proxy helps a lot to take the strain off
the mail server, but php is just doesn't provide very good platform for
building webmail clients.

> c/ for all data including tasks, could we detail a bit more what we are
> planing to include as base config ?  I beleive that base config should
> allow a total newbie to run the server without further configuration
> other than account creation.  For example :
> - do we plan to add some rbl checking to postfix by default ? 

There are currently no plans to that effect that I know of. That is not
to say that there shouldn't be. :)

> - do we configure ntp by default ?

Yes.

> - do we run some hot in place backup procedure by default ?

Nope.

> Mid term :
> a/ what would it take to prepare these tasks so that they could be
> configured against an LDAP directory for account maintenance and
> authentication on a conditional basis ?

I think it would be good to set up some use cases that we want to make
really easy and figure out how to implement those for Hardy.

> This is particularly important for samba, which, AFAIK, would
> otherwise maintain a separate password than the other services

Yes. This should be much easier these days with recent Samba versions.
I just also want to point out that we should make using Samba easier for
users who don't necessarily use LDAP, by providing some sort of
integration between the system's userdb and the Samba one. This is
blocking on a PAM change I want to get moving, though. (sort of a
common-auth.d sort of thing)

> b/ what's our policy on manual configuration changes to tasks ? Do we
> allow them and still pretend that we will be able to always do a
> seemless upgrade later on ?

What do you mean by "tasks" in this context?

> Again, sorry if I am restarting old discussion, but would definitely
> appreciate if one could bring some light on this for me.

It's fine. It's a good time to reevaluate these things so that we can
start planning for Hardy.

-- 
Soren Hansen
Ubuntu Server Team
http://www.ubuntu.com/
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