Forum OpenACS Development: RedHat Postfix or QMail for OpenAcs 5.x

I'm using Postfix on our server, and outgoing works just fine. I have had no issues beyond the initial setup (which wasn't bad, and I can probably help if you run into problems).

However, I've never gotten incoming to work at all. We're using Maildir delivery, which is theoretically just like qmail. OpenACS is checking the mail and it is disappearing from the $MAILDIR/new directory, but it's never ending up getting to where it is supposed to go. Now that I've had more time to deal with OpenACS, I suspect OACS of being broken in this regard rather than my configuration being wrong. I like OACS a lot, but it's got a lot of broken pieces, and I believe this is one of them. Now that I've got a lot more experience with OACS, I plan to tackle the problem again with fresh eyes (and much better OACS debugging skills, though still sorely lacking in most regards).

And, as for staying away from qmail, there's a lot of good reasons it isn't in standard Red Hat and there's a lot of good reasons to stay away from it regardless of whether it is provided by Red Hat or not. Someone involved in OACS/ACS early on was a big ol' DJB fanboy, and this preference for DJB tools makes the documentation way more complicated than it needs to be for most Linux system users. I mean, really, daemontools and qmail? Wholly unnecssary dependencies that are orthogonal to the real problem that OACS is trying to address. There's already a pretty big stack of odd-ball tools to be installed, and it's just sadistic to specifically recommend even more outsider tools. But now I'm straying into random bashing. I'll stop.

Good luck with Postfix. Let me know if you figure out the incoming problem. 😉

These people seem to be doing it fine. Any idea who they are or if they are of a mind to give thier code back?

Does anyone have a recommendation for
a web interface for setting forwards?
The Postfix site has a list of addons:

http://www.postfix.org/addon.html

And we want something simple that
we can set up for our cust service
for Email Forwards to one or more addys.
as in this example.

mailto:bob@mysite.com
forwards to: mailto:bob@myisp1.net, mailto:bob@gmail.com

Thanks.

-Bob

I wish I could take the credit for Webmin. I'm not unknown in the Webmin community and I've been working on it and with it for many years, but Jamie Cameron is the head honcho and, by far, the fellow deserving of credit for Webmin. I did write the book, though. 😉

But, I agree that Webmin is super-cool, and it does provide a GUI for .forward files and every other possible administration task you would ever need to do on a UNIX/Linux system--there are literally hundreds of modules for Webmin. In fact, whenever I see a question that begins, "I need a web-based tool for..." I know the answer is gonna be Webmin. And, because it includes extensive and really flexible ACLs, you can easily pull out everything that you don't want, if you find that the whole of Webmin is overkill.

Usermin might be ideal for Bob, since it allows users to edit their own forward files without having to create Webmin accounts for them. Because it only provides user-level access, one can safely let users have at it, without having to lock anything down with ACLs--it is targeted towards providing webmail, forwarding and auto-replies, spam filter configuration, database editing, procmail filters, file upload/download, etc. Any of the modules can be disabled, if even Usermin is too powerful or complex. Of course, one needs Webmin to be able to configure Usermin. Like OpenACS, the vast size of Webmin and its siblings can be intimidating. My book probably doesn't cover everything you'd ever want to do, but it's a nice survey course. If you run into problems there are good sources for help, as well. There are forums about Webmin, Usermin and Virtualmin over at http://www.virtualmin.com (which is my OpenACS site, and the reason I'm here), and there is a friendly and active mailing list at http://webmin.com/mailing.html .