Re: [Exim] using filter for maildirfolders

> On Wed, 2001-09-19 at 09:23, Philip Hazel wrote:
> > Let me see if I've understood this right. You don't have any real user
> > accounts, but you want to implement facilities whereby the users may
> > attempt to do things that could interfere with each others' files.
> >
> > And you want to implement special, ad hoc facilities to manage this?
>
> > If you want to let users do things other than retrieve their mail by
> > POP or IMAP, why not use the facilities that the operating system
> > already has built into it - that is, user accounts? These are well
> > understood and well debugged. You don't have to allow the users login
> > access.

this question is answerd by Nigel below.
i would add also a central management of mailservers is also a
big plus!

> >
> > Have I missed some important point here?
>
> Big mail systems may typically have several million "users". However
> many unix boxes are still crippled with 16 bit UIDs (is this also an NFS
> issue?), plus you then have 2 items of info to keep track of (username
> and uid).
>

Yes this is why i run this under a single account.

>
> Thats why the big mail stuff tends to run as a single uid.
> Now I wondered about using filters on such a system - except I was going
> to build the filters from a restricted front end... even so having the
> facility to restrict filter actions to the users "home" directory would
> have its uses.
>

Yes exactly but i'd like to see the restriction "below" the restricted
front-ends to avoid errors and to make things clear.

if these restrictions at "exim-level" work quite well what is the reason
not to offer filters to users on big mailsystems?

you can compare this system to databases.
you could ask the same questen here: "why do you use databases?
you can also make these things with a flat file."
(ignoring some oher reasons eg. performance...)


Robert