Hi everyone,

I will be configuring a new mail server which will be running on
OS : Red Hat Enterprise 4 (RHEL)
MTA: postfix MTA (maildir).


I will be having approximately 500 user mail account to create. There will not be any pop3 installed because we wanted them to access only through webmail (Squirrelmail).

The problem now is, because of this setting, all mail will be stored and keep in the mail server and we have to provide user with space.

Questions 1
Based on this situation, which directories should i allocate more space? /var? /home? and what is the est. size to give?

Questions 2
Normally how big a hard disk size should i use in this case?

Questions 3
And what is the standard size of disk quota you guys giving to your user?

Please advice. Thanks for your attention and reply.

rgds.
Lim

1)
a) /var is where the mailcap file will be stored
b) How much space do your users need for email storage? Is webserver also using the var partition? Do you have ftp service also? [ they all use /var ] This means that you will either have to give more details for anyone to answer this, or else take into account the questions I asked and come up with a size for the partition yourself.

2) This depends on how much space you need, if you are using raid, go for as much as the company will pay for, it never hurts to have the space, it hurts to not have it and need it.

3) what size files are your users going to be getting as email attachments? what size files will they be storing in their home directories? I tend to be slightly generous in allocating space, just for the occasional need for a larger file than generally approved. [ I make user space to be 2 GB each ]

Thanks for your reply.

I will try to get more details before i post again.

rgds

Also dealing with email kept on the server can start to become a pain over time when such user accounts start getting rather large in size and rather large in message counts. Setting up rules that delete email every X number of days is also good in some situations, it takes care of those people who never clean, delete or archive their mail they don't necessarily need on a daily basis.