I am part of
the Qmail mailing list and have just finished a project which some
people say should have a HOWTO written for it. Now I am curious
if you guys think a HOWTO is the right idea...
I have
just finished implementing a new system that allows e-mail around an entire city
(further with no major problems except cost of interstate and international
communications) even though all e-mail only goes to one domain name. The e-mail
is distributed via NFS to shares that connect when the remote location (either
permanent ISDN or dialup modem) dial up, and there is no problem with messages
not getting delivered when they are not connected, they are simply deferred
until they connect.
Users can check their e-mail from virtually
anywhere in the world, no matter if they are inside their work network, or
outside on the Internet, via the ability of distributed NIS. The idea of this
system is to dramatically decrease network traffic by not having unnecessary
bounces, having POP servers onsite, and the network will still appear to work
(from any location), even if the main server goes down. Cost is also decreased
as all that is required is a small server (x86's do the job fine) in each
location, and one main server that only really needs to handle traffic and
requests, with no real data storage capabilities. Messages are simply deferred
if a server is down, but POP mail can still be retrieved. If one link goes down,
nobody else is affected in the slightest.
All
maintenance is done from the one main computer, and soon I will also figure
out logging and analysis and document that as well.
So...do you guys think this is a reasonable topic
for a HOWTO? I have skimmed HOWTO-INDEX and HOWTO-HOWTO and will hopefully
find time to write one in the next month. Most of my work is done from Windows
since I don't have time (literally) to even install linux at home at
the moment. I will have to write in text or HTML and ask someone else to
take care of formatting it correctly because I really don't have time to
learn SGML or similar.
Thanks for your input,