On Jun 7, 2001 Rod Hernandez said something like:
>
> Can anyone comment on pros and cons of installing Majordomo on a server
> separate from the mail server versus the same server? Is administration of
> aliases greater in the two-server configuration?
>
Well. We have a setup like this in my shop and yes the alias
administration is greater but for our environment, it was necessary.
The pros as i see them are this:
- Maintainence of the Majordomo box is
easier because it is separate from your mail server. In our setup we can
trap the mail going to majordomo and queue while to update sendmail or
move the machine or whatever...very nice.
- You can get a mailing list package that suites your needs, regardless of
your mail server software. This was the biggest boon for us. We wanted
something powerful and flexible and, at the time, majordomo was a very
good alternative. Neither my boss of myself we linux/perl masters so
something which we could root around in and had a large installed user
base as well as some good online support, was a good thing. That and
setting up mailing lists with external users in Groupwise (not to mention
Exchange) is a nightmare and maintaince is just as bad.
- If you serparate the two softwares and at some point in the future
decide to move to something else, its relatively painless. Again, not
decided by the NOS/mail platform you run so your choices are still wide
open. Hopefully the choice you made the first time around won't limit
your ability to get your list data moved to another list manager.
The Cons:
- Its another machine to administer. In a primarily NDS(Novell)
environment without the benefits of NDS 8.5, Netware 5.1, and eDirectory,
user adminstration across the two platforms is nonexistant. If you're
running NIS and sticking to (U|L)n(i|u)x then your headache level likely
decreases drastically. In our shop, there are only three accounts on the
Linux machine so its no big deal. But if you're going to utilize that
server for more than just Majordomo, you may want to look at something
which will integrate into your authentication scheme easily.
- Its another machine to administer. I know, I said it already, but
asside from user administration across platforms there is also the added
problems of patching/firewalling/securing the NOS and all of the service
you're running. Again more work on the back side.
- Lets not forget about backups. We started out using ArcServ for backups
which made a laughable attempt at a Linux client 1.5 years ago. We have
since switched from tar/copy to a Netware volume to running the full agent
for Veritas Backup Exec. Much nicer than storing passwords in scripts and
logging into NDS every night. This way we get the whole machine backed up
easily and not just all of the Majordomo data/config.
I may have missed something but that is what jumped out at me. Its my
feeling that the pros far outway the cons.
Hope it helps...
____________________________
Mike Neuharth
ADCS Technology Specialist
http://www.umn.edu/adcs
E-Mail : mjn@umn.edu
Page Mail : 6126486512@page.metrocall.com
http://supermonkeycollider.dyndns.org/
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