On 24 August 1999, Wild Apache Support <support(_at_)wildapache(_dot_)net>
wrote:
[...]
The original intent was to have secondary as a mirror to primary,
but this has not worked out too well, so we are not doing this.
Currently, the primary server handles all my Web traffic (I am an ISP
with 104 dial-in lines serviced by two Portmaster3), my mail traffic,
and radius authentication. What I would like to do is off-load some
of the traffic on the primary server by moving my mail system over to
the secondary server.
What problem are you trying to solve here? If you want to reduce
the _load_ on your primary server, the way to go is to move some of your
users (with homes and all) to the secondary server, and setup virtual
domains for mail and web. If you want to reduce the _outbound_ network
traffic on your domain, moving things inside the domain will help only
if the primary and secondary servers have completely separate links to
the outside world --- otherwise the only effect would be an increased
traffic inside your domain, caused by people POP-ing their mail from the
secondary server to the primary one. So, what exactly are you trying to
accomplish?
What I do not want to do is maintain a copy of all my authenication
control files (i.e., passwd, shadow, group, etc.) on the secondary and
I do not want to replicate and maintain my $HOME directories on the
secondary.
This is probably not possible. Do your users have shell access, or
all they get is a PPP link?
I do not and will not use NFS on my system!
Wise decision. :-)
However, I do want to maintain my mail spool files
(/var/spool/mail/...) on the secondary.
[...]
See above. Sendmail can deliver messages to virtual users (although
I'd strongly recommend using Postfix instead), but it will still need
a local table telling it which file correspond to which recipient.
Procmail may or may not be able to cope with it, depending on the rest
of your setup. Your biggest problem however is the POP server: there
are such beasts that support virtual users (f.i. Cyrus imapd), but they
all need the full authentication machinery to be hosted locally.
Now, is there a way to have procmail running on the secondary and
processing mail with the mail spools there, but accessing the
authentication control files and $HOME directories on the primary
server?
[...]
Put this way, no. You really need a more consistent statement of
your problem. You probably also need to re-organize your network.
However, none of this is really related to Procmail. Mail me in private
if you need assistance (I've been a consultant for several ISPs for a
long time).
Regards,
Liviu Daia
--
Dr. Liviu Daia e-mail: Liviu(_dot_)Daia(_at_)imar(_dot_)ro
Institute of Mathematics web page: http://www.imar.ro/~daia
of the Romanian Academy PGP key: http://www.imar.ro/~daia/daia.asc