[cobalt-users] A Dedicated mail server

["jeanjean" <jeanjean@xxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Sorry for my poor english, i'm french... I try my best ;)

I think about to use a dedicated mail server with a Raq4, 30Gb Hdd and 512Mb
or 1Gb ram

But, i have some questions about that.

Actually, we have about 300 customers, on 3 servers (Raq4's)
We use the standard dns config, like the MX record going to the
www.domain.com
I think that the main problem we will have, is that we have to create the
300 'mail sites' on the mail server... I'm right ?
And, we will have to create all the www.*domain*.* in the form of
mail.*domain*.*   Is that also right ?
Then, we will have to modify all our MX records, to point to all the mail
domains.
Here, i think about to do a 'search and replace' in the named/records file,
and replace every
High www.*
to
High mail.*
and to filter the domains that should not point to the mail server... ;)
Is that ok ?

Also, i thinked that we can disable the FTP services, to make that our
customers can't upload/download something on the mail server.
I remember also, that there is a 'soft' limit to 250 or 255 max sites, but
this can be modified.  But, can Apache support all the 300 domains ?  Should
we have to use 2 IP's, and share the 300 (and growing) domains on the 2 IP's
?  Is this working ?
Is a Raq4 with 30Gb hdd and 512Mb ok ?  (most people use 5 or 10Mb for the
mails)
Or do you recommand to put 1Gb ram ?  (This work fine for us...;)
Or a bigger HDD ?

And, last question, how many times should our customers let the old www. xyz
mail domain in the mail software ?
24 hours after the DNS changes, + 24 hours more, to be sure ?
Should the local scripts (like formmail's) work, also if the mail server is
not on the local server ?

I want to say thank you for every comment or suggestion.
You can also reply to my mail, but it can be interesting to share it here.

Best regards
Jean