Mailing List Archive: Re: Courier or cyrus for IMAP?

On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Felix Tiede wrote:

> I can't tell about the load the server has to handle since I've never had
> that many users, but AFAIK Cyrus is designed to run on big sites with many
> users while Courier is something for "middle sized sites".

Clearly this is hogwash - Courier makes an excellent IMAP server for big
sites too (I work for an ISP) - usually the bottleneck is not the server
but the storage. Courier only works with Maildir storage which uses one
file per message - this does away with file-locking issues and big mbox
files. Courier also does POP3 as well as IMAP and the backend can hook
into almost any authentication scheme (LDAP, MySQL, etc).

> I'd say the
> following: If the documentation doesn't state otherwise about the expected
> load I'd use Courier. But at 6-700 users I'd reconsider...

We have over 3000 accounts using Courier quite happily thanks...

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Aj.
Sys. Admin / Developer

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On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Jose Gonzalez Gomez wrote:

> I have several Cyrus installations and I haven't found Cyrus more
> difficult to install than Courier

Ive found Cyrus to be a lot more problematic to setup compared to Courier.

> * Courier uses maildir, while Cyrus uses its own mail format. If you
> are a maildir fan, you have to go Courier. I don't know how
> maildir stores mails, but with Cyrus you have a file per mail, so
> in case of a disk failure you just lose one mail (well, a small
> disk failure :o) )

Maildir is one file per email too.

> * The integration between Postfix and Courier/Cyrus is really easy
> to setup, so I wouldn't count this to make a decission. With
> Courier, Postfix just delivers to maildir, with Cyrus you must use
> lmtp to let Cyrus do the final delivery

More stuff to go wrong compared to Courier install.

> * Cyrus is integrated with SASL, while Courier isn't. This was a
> critical point for me, as integration with SASL gives you the
> possibility to use Kerberos for authentication when accessing
> mail. Courier uses its own propietary daemon for authentication,
> with PAM and LDAP (among others) access.

Courier can hook into many different authentication schemes (we are
currently using MySQL) including PAM, vpopmail, LDAP, etc.

> * Cyrus has support for Sieve, a server side scripting language that
> lets you do some cool things on the server side.

Courier uses maildrop, "a server-side scripting language that let's you do
some cool things on the server side".

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Aj.
Sys. Admin / Developer

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