Tuning some defaults for 2.5

[Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems)]

Hi there,

I would like us to take under consideration, changing the default value for 
the following configuration values for Cyrus IMAP 2.5;

The purpose is to improve how Cyrus IMAP works out-of-the-box, and provide 
defaults that are more likely to not require change.

That said, as some of these have a significant impact on runtime environments, 
which is part of the reason to consider the defaults as well, we'd like to 
motivate either keeping or changing the default in our documentation.

Should we change any of these settings, three things are going to happen;

1) The default is changed for 2.5 (e.g. git's master branch),

2) The new default, rationale and any consequnetial operational change is 
documented in the Release Notes for 2.5 

3) Documentation is provided to;

  3.a) Configure a 2.5 server to keep the old behaviour, and

  3.b) Deal with the new default (e.g. upgrade the environment to match with 
the new default), where appropriate -think for example  
"improved_mboxlist_sort"

  ************************************************************
  ** Your feedback is much appreciated, not to say required **
  ************************************************************

In no particular order then alphabetical:

- allowallsubscribe to 1

I'm considering situations in which not to allow users to subscribe to folders 
on other servers specific more so then situations in which users are allowed 
to do so.

- allowusermoves to 1

I'm considering preventing RENAMEs and XFERs more of a niche then allowing 
them by default.

- altnamespace to 1

Perhaps only of esthetic value, but let's use the IMAP namespace by default.

- hashimapspool to 1

Cyrus IMAP ships with this default on most Linux distributions already, if I 
recall correctly.

- improved_mboxlist_sort to 1

This setting really reads as one that still has the default set to 0 because 
the upgrade path is not without conversion / manual intervention. I suppose it 
is more feasible to use the more correct sorting by default, and have those 
environments that can't or won't dump/convert/undump their mailboxes.db toggle 
this setting to 0, then vice-versa.

- normalizeuid to 1

Somewhat related to username_tolower, in that both lowercase the username, but 
stripping the blanks by default sounds like a good thing to me.

- statuscache to 1

Cache, hell yeah, woohoo! More cache!

- unixhierarchysep to 1

This seems to be used so often, because it allows dots to be used in the 
mailbox and folder names, that I can only conclude (re-)considering the 
default does it justice.

- username_tolower to 1

Not sure I can think of an environment I've been in that used case-sensitive 
usernames.

- virtdomains to userid

I'm just throwing this one out there to see if y'all are still awake ;-)

It seems to me it has little impact on environments without virtdomains, while 
allowing what is required in environments with virtdomains set to on. Neither 
is the same thing, of course, but I think virtdomains: userid perhaps is a 
better starting point for new environments.

If you have other configuration settings for which you would like us to 
consider changing the default value, please let us know!

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen

-- 
Senior Engineer, Kolab Systems AG

e: vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com
t: +316 42 801 403
w: http://www.kolabsys.com

pgp: 9342 BF08
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