[Imap-use] replication

[Jeroen van Aart]

Joel Reicher wrote:
> There's no such thing as an "email server". If you mean IMAP server, then
> the problem you describe above does not exist for a setup of one IMAP

I tend to mean by email server anything on a server which helps in 
having a complete email "solution". In my case, exim4 and uw-imap and 
some other bits and pieces.

> server for a user. It is only a "solution" like replication which would
> introduce the problem.

I'm pretty much convinced now that imap replication can be a good idea 
in theory, but in practice it won't work fine, for now.

> email will hold it and retry later. There could be any number of
> exchangers waiting to retry, anywhere in the world.

Yes I failed to figure another benefit of failover, queueing

> But perhaps you're talking about potentially out-of-sync multiple
> instances of the ultimate destination. Again, this is a problem that would
> be introduced by replication, and is absent without it.

Yes I realised that when I got the idea about replication, that you 
introduce the problem of being out of sync. If I look at subversion 
synchronisation. The mirroring of check ins happens more or less 
instantaneous. Developer checks in on main svn server --> svn server 
checks in on the mirror.

> What makes you think you need replication for this, as opposed to all of
> the other mechanisms that are available?

I wasn't entirely sure if I needed it, but I was playing with the idea.

> Smarthost is not a Debian term, I just don't see what mail transfer has
> to do with any of this. I thought we were only talking about IMAP servers.

Well, I talk about both the MTA and imap. Sorry for being confusing, 
using exact terminology is not my strongest point. :-)

> server. Any potential failure for an IMAP server is a potential failure for
> an NFS server, so there is no point trying to cover the former by using
> the latter. If anything, it makes the problem much worse.

Yes I agree, but also looking at recent discussion on one of the imap 
lists and judging from the documentation, NFS doesn't work well with 
imap. Due to it's lack of certain features imap needs.

Best regards,
Jeroen