Re: [MLUG] New campus e-mail?

[Nathan Odle <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Jonathan King wrote:
> That you can do, since it *is* gmail.  (Interaction with POP I don't
> know about; but I think you can get it to forward to your pop account
> and keep it on the server.  Mess with the preferences, etc.

> I don't think that will work, but there are lots of "load all my email
> up to my gmail account" hacks out there if you look.
Well, after spending an hour or so messing with GMail and loading old 
e-mail into it, I'm not very impressed.  The hacks all pretty much 
consist of taking an mbox/Maildir and re-sending the messages through an 
SMTP server (not forwarding...re-sending) to GMail.  Here's why it sucks:

1)  Original time/date information is lost.  You get the time/date that 
GMail receives your re-sent message.

2)  Thread ("Conversation") structure is lost sometimes. 

3)  Goofiness involved with getting your Sent mail into GMail also.


It looks like if porting in your old email in an accurate fashion is 
important, forget it.  I think Google could really help adopters if they 
provided a feature where one uploads a Maildir or mbox and then GMail 
parses the whole shooting match into your account.  Not sure if they'd 
ever do this though, seems like it might be fairly resource-intensive.  
On the other hand, you've only got to do it once per user.

I also just hate, hate, hate POP.  Given that Google doesn't seem too 
excited about providing IMAP access it is pretty much a non-starter for 
us.  I know that GMail isn't really intended to be a generic 
mail-hosting service and should be used through the AJAX web interface, 
but I would gladly replace the lost ad-revenue for them if they'd give 
me IMAP.  The reason for this is that knowing Google it'd actually be 
fast.  I have tested other IMAP hosting services and found them woefully 
slow once your mailbox gets over a few hundred megabytes.  Of course, 
this would be a moot point if we used the web interface, but we really, 
really prefer to use Thunderbird.

So I guess that we're stuck with our own hosting for awhile.  I have 
been trying hard to find an alternative but I just can't beat what I've 
set up here locally.  I mean, I've got a nice dual-CPU Xeon server 
running Linux on a dedicated T1 with plenty of RAID 5 15,000 RPM SCSI 
hard drive space (I think I've got our mail quotas set at something like 
2 or 3 GB).  Postfix, amavis, and spamassassin along with 3 concurrent 
anti-virus engines mean that virtually nothing we don't want to see gets 
through and account management is handled through a convenient web 
interface.  No software license fees.  Uptime of something like 1 1/2 
years and counting.

The downside?  I am the guy that has to maintain it...and I've got much 
better things to do these days than run an e-mail server.  I am also 
pretty nervous about what would happen if the server fell over.  I'm 
just not in a position to be an all-out systems administrator.

I did hire a top-rate computer consultant to handle the rest of our 
stuff, got everything under contract with him, and moved our file 
servers to Windows Server 2003 so that he could manage them (although 
extremely good with Windows, this guy's organization doesn't really do 
Linux).  I've tried to find a capable, *reliable* Linux consultant but 
I'm convinced that the only ones that exist in Columbia are working for 
somewhere like the University, not hiring themselves out.  Not to 
mention that only 1 out of 50 computer consultants actually understands 
business and has the proper attitude to be useful to us.  I could move 
our e-mail over to Exchange but...I refuse for reasons that should be 
obvious to anyone who's had to admin an Exchange box.  I actually joke 
with the guy handling our computers that every time I call him he's 
fixing an Exchange server.  In reality, it's not *every* time...but it's 
probably an honest 70%. 

So, that's why I was pretty hopeful for GMail...guess I'll keep waiting 
and get a little more comfortable with this monkey of an e-mail server 
on my back.

-N


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