> The qmail-users database is only needed when the home-directories
> are mounted via NFS or the passwords are managed by NIS or similar.
> During a NFS or NIS outage the messages would bounce if the users
> were not known locally. This way the message is deferred until NFS
> is up again.
As a subnote to the list (not specifically to Oliver)...that is actually an
interesting statement (and yes, I know that's what it says in the FAQ). We
run a number of qmail servers together here combining NFS and NIS, and we
don't use a users database. If NFS goes down, the main server simply defers
the e-mail, saying in the logs that it is unavailable to deliver to the
Maildir (it will defer for up to a week, the default timeout).
If NIS goes down, everything continues as normal since all our qmail servers
are slave NIS servers rather than clients. BUT if we ran clients, and qmail
had to do a delivery to the machine it was running on (and it was not the
master server), then yes there would be a problem (in finding the home
directory), but in general for safety I recommend using NIS slaves rather
than clients - there is little reason to do it as clients and not the other.
If you're worried about security - hec, you're running NIS! The most
insecure
distributed information network in the world! You have to lock it down
manually by default to get any smidget of security out of it :>
Just some information for the list. Might help someone one day.
Brett.
Manager
InterPlanetary Solutions
http://ipsware.com/
