Re: Completely Virtual Mail Server

[Lee W <debian-user@unassemble.co.uk>]

<snip>
> 
> Thanks for the suggestion.  I did look into cyrus however I dismissed it
> because it did not appear to support SQL databases, which almost all of
> Postfix lookup tables can be read from.
> 
> If I knew more about the C programming language I would consider writing
> either a patch to the virtual MDA of postfix to allow it do filtering or
> write a completely difference MDA altogether.
> 
> I though of a couple of other ways I could maybe do this, but both have
> major drawbacks.
> 
>     1. Run the Mail server in a chroot, therefore with a different
>     /etc/passwd file for the virtual users.
>     
>     2. Use the virtual MDA from Postfix but have the mail delivered to
>     temporary mailboxes.  Then run a cron job to periodically check for
>     mail, filter it and deliver any remaining mail to the correct
>     mailbox.  I believe procmail can have a home directory specfied on
>     its command line using the "-m" option.  This would also allow
>     additional features such as auto-replies to be used.
>     

I think I just found an answer to my own question.  The latest postfix
(2.0) is the first version to have an in-built filtering mechanism. 
>From what I read in the FILTER_README file is requires the use of
external filtering programs that exit with particular codes to tell
postfix what to do.  

In theory this is exactly what I (and possibly others) have been looking
for.

Hope this bit of info helps someone in the future.

Regards

Lee