Using Debian with lots of users
Hi,
At my local high school, the computer guy is trying to set up external
E-mail for everyone. We are rather a small school, with slightly over 1000
people. He has a Linux box, and a sysadmin has come in to set it up, but
can't seem to, he says that he can't get shadow passwords to work with
POP, using Pegasus for Windows. I don't know where he could go wrong here,
but he's probably using some mickey mouse way.
I am suggesting he use Debian, and was wondering what the best way to set
it up would be.
Note there are lots of users, but many wouldn't use there accounts at all.
Plus, we only have a 28.8kbps modem, so we shouldn't get too much traffic
from the remote site. (Hopefully :-)
Firstly, what is the easiest way to handle <1000 people with things like
qpopper, and fetchmail - they'd have to be in passwd? Well, whats the
easiest way to add 1000 people to passwd? He would have a file with all
the names, so could I write a script to do this? (please note I'm only
just starting with scripts :-)
Would smail be able to handle it, or should I use exim?
I'm not sure what sort of account he's got at the ISP, but we have our own
domain name (ie, my account would be something like
tim_thomson@paraparaumu.college.edu.nz).
I am guessing he has got a ETRN account, but I'm not sure. Fetchmail
should work with whatever account we have - can it handle 1000 users?
qpopper - OK with lots of different users.
Note, we only have 60 computers, (2 labs) so only 60 people max could be
checking their mail at the same time. The Linux box is a 486DX/2 66 with
16meg of RAM, can't remember the hard drive size - probably about 400meg.
He was worried about security - if I took most services out of the
services and inetd.conf then this wouldn't be too much of a problem?
I'd use a home compiled kernel (2.0.33), saves installing the source at
college. I'd turn off all fowarding/firewalling access so no one on
college side can get out.
What would be best to get out? I use diald here at home, and have a cron
process run fetchmail. Outgoing mail goes straight out at home, but at
college it should be cached up to fifteen minutes and then sent - I could
write a script that cron calls every hour - runs say pon then smail -q
then fetchmail then poff. I could also have another script run every 15
mins that checks if there is mail to be sent (how?), if there is, run pon
then smail -q (and fetchmail, since where logged in), then poff.
Actually, I could put everything into ip-up (including poff?).
Can I also catch Subscriptions to mailing lists?
Please help, he's contemplating going to NT - even more problems :-)
-Tim.
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