[Sunhelp] Re: mail

[Gary Gendel x3145]

Indeed there is such a beast in some POP servers, but I only know of one for 
Qmail, not sendmail.  In that client, you can send a broadcast message that 
gets sent to the mail user if they are logged on.  If they aren't it sends the 
message at the time they log on.  The nice thing about this is the broadcasts 
won't fill the disk replicating the message for all users.

BTW, I'm using Qmail and it is easy to set up and maintain, plus it is faster 
and more secure than sendmail.  In addition, it allows virtual users (ones 
that don't have a Unix login) when using the POP server.  A few wrinkles:

(1) To use advanced spam control features, you have to replace your smnpd 
daemon, but I had no problem setting that up as well.

(2) To use Qmail compatible POP servers, you need to use the MailDir format, 
rather than the mbox format used by sendmail.  Their format is more secure, 
but it will break programs that don't understand it.  This isn't a problem if 
all your clients use POP.

(3) Sendmail specific things like .forward and vacation won't work.  Their is 
mechanisms for doing these things the Qmail way, plus there is a script to 
allow .forward files to work.

sunhelp.org may use Qmail, since the mailing list manager seems to be 
ezmlm-idx, which only runs on Qmail.  Check out http://www.qmail.org/ for more 
information, if you're interested.

> > hello,
> >
> > is there a software or configuration on which i can edit a file which
> > will send to all the users on the system. sort of an announcement. does
> > POP or IMAP related software do the trick? or do i have to do something on
> > the sendmail.cf file.
> >
> > thanks.
> >
> >
> > dex