Re: offlineIMAP status?

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 03:03:15PM -0500, Charles Marcus wrote:
> So, I guess my main question is, how well does it work with two Cyrus 
> IMAP servers that have about 30 user accounts, some with only an Inbox, 
> Drafts, Templates and Trash folders, and others with 30 or more folders.

Well, OfflineIMAP is designed for personal use rather than syncing two
whole servers.  So the answer is -- this is untested, and there is no
automatic support for syncing an entire server installation.  You would
have to manually configure each account in OfflineIMAP.

> 1. Public facing Web/Secure IMAP server (SuSE SLES9 running Cyrus IMAP), 
> behind an ISP provided firewall, with only necessary ports open.
> 
> 2. Internal File/Mail server (also running SLES9, Cyrus IMAP), behind 
> another firewall that has all incoming ports closed.
> 
> 3. Clients on internal LAN talk only to the Internal IMAP mail server 
> when in the office at full gigabit (LAN) speeds.

Do I understand that the public IMAP server is not reachable via a fast
link from your internal LAN?

I basically wrote OfflineIMAP as a user frustrated with the performace
of using IMAP over the Internet.  Your users may be able to use it for
themselves individually.  Alternatively, more mail clients are doing
IMAP caching these days.  I think Thunderbird and KMail finally are, and
Mac Mail.App has for quite some time.

> Currently, we are using an outsourced email hosting provider, and the 
> speed, because it is all IMAP, and because we deal with a lot of large 
> attachments, is *very* slow. I want the new system to scream, but I am 
> nervous about security.

The other thing you might consider is get reasonably-sized (maybe SDSL)
link to your physical location.  Put an IMAP server outside your
firewall, though on an Ethernet connection to it.  That provides great
speed internally plus flexibility outside.

I'm thinking that OfflineIMAP is probably not the best solution for your
particular situation.

-- John