[tech] Sane mail

Leighton Haynes dayta at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
Fri Nov 1 16:37:05 WST 2002


On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 04:06:02PM +0800, Nick Bannon wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 03:14:10PM +0800, Mark Tearle wrote:
> > No, that's dumb.  mooneye is exposed to the world and not the worlds
> > most reliable machine in any of it's nine lives.  The disk for the
> > mail spool is on morwong, the users are on morwong, Chewbacca's a
> > wookie, it just makes sense for mail to delivered on morwong.
> 
> No, that's a kneejerk. mooneye is already exposed to the world and
> you're still dependent on it to get your mail through in any scenario.
> Currently, you're dependent on morwong as well.
UCC will be dependant on morwong as a whole until NFS isn't there. 
Also, there is a (rather large) difference between being dependant on
mooneye to short-term spool the mail before forwarding it to morwong,
and being dependant on mooneye to actually _store_ the mail. Mooneye
dies. Lots.

> FWIW, many (most?) of the users are not on morwong (though I,
> personally, am).
But their files are. While some UCCans probably just pop/imap their mail
off, a lot also just log in to machines and read it.

> The point of the standalone mail server is to simplify the system and
> reduce the dependencies. If it works on mooneye it can also work on a
> locked down dedicated box with mirrored disks, firewalled to the hilt,
> and the server never has to touch an mbox format file again.
Except it doesn't really simplify the system much at all, and the dependancy,
such as it is, is not large. And yes, we _could_ make a new dedicated box blah
blah blah. But personally, I prefer the solution we can do right fucking now.
Because doing a good solution now, is better than an excellent solution at
some indeterminate point in the future. (And I'm not ceding that your 
solution is better in any case).

Leighton...

-- 

#0421 113 305 - dayta at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
How do you expect?/I will know what to do./When all I know.
Is what you tell me to. - Linkin Park/By Myself


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