remove dovecot-postfix from lucid

[Michael Jones]

On 04/16/2010 07:00 AM, ubuntu-server-request at lists.ubuntu.com wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Imre Gergely<gimre at narancs.net>  wrote:
>    
>> >
>> >  Just my two cents... I would agree on the confusion part of the extra
>> >  dovecot-postfix.conf config file... It's an attempt to make the servers
>> >  more user friendly, which I'm not sure is needed... if somebody wants to
>> >  install/configure/administer a mailserver, that's not really an average
>> >  user task, the person should know a little bit what he's doing, it
>> >  shouldn't be "too easy" and integrated and out-of-the-box...
>> >
>> >  It should be clear that you have to mess with config files to set things
>> >  up and Ubuntu shouldn't make things easier, at least not on servers.
>> >  Desktop is another story. IMHO.
>>      
> Hi,
>
> not trying to start a flame war here but I really disagree.
>
> Of course, setting up a mailserver requires some understanding but why
> should it require everyone to mess up with a bunch of crypting config
> files? Understanding the big picture and having an idea of how things
> fit together is important, the detail of the syntax of the config
> files isn't (IMHO). I care a lot about educating users and admins but
> I also believe that not being too elitist helps.
>
> Many mail servers serve small groups who just want a simple
> configuration with a few users. What is needed is receiving and
> sending emails, doing some filtering and serving these mails to the
> users. For such use cases, I would rather trust a well-thought default
> configuration than random fiddling with config files after hours of
> reading outdated tutorials. I have been maintaining a mailserver for
> an association over a few years and learned a lot in the course but I
> really wish it had been less painful: documentation was often
> incomplete or outdated, it seems it is getting better though.
>
> Being able to tune things is nice and a requirement for less common
> use cases, but why should it be a mess for the simple systems?
> Maybe I'm being naive here and there is no such thing as a simple mail
> server configuration, but the huge penetration of exchange says at
> least that there is a market for it... I would be much more
> confortable in a world where more workgroup are able to switch to open
> solutions, and this requires making them integrated and easy to set
> up.
>
> Fixing shortcomings in the current implementation seems important but
> please don't stop providing good default configuration and helpers for
> the common needs.
>
> Sorry for the rant, and I want to emphasise that I for one appreciate
> a lot the effort to make this less difficult for non-full-time
> sysadmins!
>
>
> Best regards.
>
> -- Aur?lien Naldi



Hey guys,

     I wanted to chime in and share my experience with this. I'm a 
senior Software Engineering student at a school in Indiana, USA.  I 
founded a small company about a year ago, and act as the server admin 
for it. We use Ubuntu server because its a good chunk easier to 
understand and configure than the other server distro's we tried.

     One of the services that we needed to install was a mailserver,  
which is the topic of the last few posts. I'll be honest, I spent about 
40 hours working on this. A full work-week, and ultimately gave up in 
defeat. Part of the problem may be that I'm still learning the ins and 
outs, and as such I have no problem admitting that I am the sole point 
of failure here.

     However, part of the discussion, as in the quoted post above, is 
that our mailserver will likely never be used by more than 50 people 
total. The actual number now is 3. We identified that complicated 
configurations with special tweaks is not cost effective at this time.

     As Aurelien Naldi mentions, we initially pondered using exchange 
for our mail needs. The cost, and proprietary nature of it make it 
unacceptable for us, but we did see the ease of setup to be of value.

     I intend to revisit configuring our mailserver when the term of 
school gets out, and I have more time. Like I mentioned, I'm sure I just 
don't know enough about the topic yet. But users do feel some pain when 
configuring services is not very straight forward.

     Thank you so much for your work on ubuntu-server. I can't express 
how much benefit I've derived from using it.

     Have a great day!

-Mike