Fat Distribution Decision

[segleaur]

k, i'm a Roundcube user right now, and I am interested in a thin distrib for a few reasons, based on the fact that i use mac os x server for everything here:

- i've got about 10 users that are off and on the server's network, and i decided to use opendirectory for everything (that means, client software management (forcing certain network options, software update servers, preferences, etc), AFP shares, centralised authentication, etc).

- there are other websites (subdomains) running on the same server. from what i can tell from the other posts (i haven't had a chance to install or really look over the code yet, so i may not be accurate with this), it seems that zimbra owns http/s ports - which might make this a bit difficult.

now, i don't care about running two instances of mysql, but it's not as simple as to reeningeer the built-in zimbra ldap to authenticate all users against everything else (such as AFP, FTP, console login, shells, radius).

i don't even mind having to configure zimbra from a CLI, that's trivial (squirrelmail works that way, roundcube works that way - from vi, horde works that way - doesn't quite matter, i'm used to it by now).

anyway, just a quick note on why this makes sense for me, but maybe it's not the case for everyone and i understand the zimbra team's position on preferring releasing fat distribs, instead of thin distribs.

i'll look into it, if i can come up with something workable, i'll let you guys know.

[KevinH]

Originally Posted by segleaur

- there are other websites (subdomains) running on the same server. from what i can tell from the other posts (i haven't had a chance to install or really look over the code yet, so i may not be accurate with this), it seems that zimbra owns http/s ports - which might make this a bit difficult.

The current release allows you to set any HTTP/S port you'd like at install time.

[segleaur]

The current release allows you to set any HTTP/S port you'd like at install time.

cool. so that's one less thing to worry about. i could simply run it as https only, and have a redirect statement in, let's say the unsecure instance of apache to redirect http://webmail to https://webmail.

[Counsel]

(Likely this is obsolete and has been resolved, but I couldn't help but be troubled...)

The software looks like it would solve many problems at small firms.

However, if, in response to a question about how the software alters a system (and where it alters it), Zimbra responds:

Originally Posted by marcmac

This is an incomplete list:
/etc/passwd
/etc/group
/etc/sudoers
/etc/sysog.conf
/var/log/zimbra.log
/etc/ld.so.conf
/etc/logrotate.conf (or /etc/logrotate.d/zimbra, depending)
/var/spool/cron/zimbra (or wherever your distro keeps crontabs)
/etc/fstab

For a complete list - install it and find out - or download and peruse the source. (Which, if you're as concerned as you seem to be, is probably the best way to go).

...

I do not understand the thought process of Zimbra support here...

Please tell me you have a list of what the installation process does to a linux distribution that the package is released under.

I would hate to tell my clients, "Install it and find out..."

I would recommend, from a support-oriented paradigm, that ZIMBRA install the package and find out. It is, after all, your software...

[halg]

Originally Posted by Counsel

(Likely this is obsolete and has been resolved, but I couldn't help but be troubled...)

The software looks like it would solve many problems at small firms.

However, if, in response to a question about how the software alters a system (and where it alters it), Zimbra responds:



I do not understand the thought process of Zimbra support here...

Please tell me you have a list of what the installation process does to a linux distribution that the package is released under.

I would hate to tell my clients, "Install it and find out..."

I would recommend, from a support-oriented paradigm, that ZIMBRA install the package and find out. It is, after all, your software...

Thank you, Councel. It is good to know someone else out there is sensible.

Well, I went ahead (months ago) and installed Zimbra and hoped it would not irreparably destroy my system if I tried to uninstall it. Zimbra was slower than a pig, thank you, even with 1GB and only 2 users testing it. So, no thanks, time to uninstall. It took me weeks to undo all of the changes, and even then the system did not seem to work as it did before (which had been perfect before I installed Zimbra).

I ended up re-installing the entire Fedora system. Needless to say, I will never trust anything some cluck on a forum says when it comes to "just trust the system." Intuition told me I should not have trusted him, based on my years of admin and support experience. Shame on me.

Now. Listen up: If you had pulled this garbage in a trading company, or a nuclear plant, or anywhere else uptime and fallback capability are critical to an operation, you would have been fired on the spot. I realize you don't get paid to do this work, but please be more careful with such advice in the future.

Counsel is 100% correct. It is YOUR software, and therefore YOUR responsibility.

[gmsmith]

Originally Posted by halg

Thank you, Councel. It is good to know someone else out there is sensible.

Well, I went ahead (months ago) and installed Zimbra and hoped it would not irreparably destroy my system if I tried to uninstall it. Zimbra was slower than a pig, thank you, even with 1GB and only 2 users testing it. So, no thanks, time to uninstall. It took me weeks to undo all of the changes, and even then the system did not seem to work as it did before (which had been perfect before I installed Zimbra).

I ended up re-installing the entire Fedora system. Needless to say, I will never trust anything some cluck on a forum says when it comes to "just trust the system." Intuition told me I should not have trusted him, based on my years of admin and support experience. Shame on me.

Now. Listen up: If you had pulled this garbage in a trading company, or a nuclear plant, or anywhere else uptime and fallback capability are critical to an operation, you would have been fired on the spot. I realize you don't get paid to do this work, but please be more careful with such advice in the future.

Counsel is 100% correct. It is YOUR software, and therefore YOUR responsibility.

Years of IT Management experience tells me when I am trying an application such as Zimbra, I do so on a machine that can be scrapped and rebuilt without impacting any production resources.

There was something obviously wrong with your machine/install if it was slow for 2 users and you were using anything close to a modern processor and had normal resource availability.

Zimbra is a complex application and interacts with the operating system. If you can't understand it, you have no business complaining about it if it doesn't work the way *you* expect it to work.

[halg]

Originally Posted by gmsmith

Years of IT Management experience tells me when I am trying an application such as Zimbra, I do so on a machine that can be scrapped and rebuilt without impacting any production resources.

There was something obviously wrong with your machine/install if it was slow for 2 users and you were using anything close to a modern processor and had normal resource availability.

Zimbra is a complex application and interacts with the operating system. If you can't understand it, you have no business complaining about it if it doesn't work the way *you* expect it to work.

Nope. That wasn't it.

The issue wasn't about how the system works, or how it performed, or whether I understood how it worked. The issue was about fallback.

I didn't care so much that I had to remove it from my system -- for whatever reasons you may care to attribute that decision -- it was simply that removing it from the system was more complex and insidious than I expected based on the "good advice" of someone on this list who thought I should take the very approach you suggested.

Let's say for a moment that the system I tried out Zimbra on really was a "scrap and rebuild" machine. Let's say the system tested out OK and I deployed it to a live production machine. That's where the rub is.

The installation instructions indicate that Zimbra should be the only application on the system. And it was in my case. I think the real lesson here is that, in the future, I will stay away from turn-key solutions like this that cannot co-exist with others or be rolled-back in a straight-forward fashion.

[ezajko]

Is anyone interested in building Community Zimbra Fat Distro (ZFD)?

It would be Zimbra OSS based