General IMAP functionality

[Warrick FitzGerald]

Earl R Shannon wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Comments are imbedded below.
>
> Warrick FitzGerald wrote:
>
>> Posted this last night, but did not see it come through ... sorry 
>> about the re-post if you have this already.
>>
>>
>> ============
>>
>> I’m in the process of moving an office of POP3 users to IMAP, and 
>> realized that that I don’t fully understand how things normally work.
>>
>> Our mail is currently hosted on an ASP basis and when a user is 
>> running out of disk space they receive an email saying you’re running 
>> out of space. I tested what happens on the IMAP side, and using 
>> Mozilla Thunderbird I get a message popup saying pretty much the same 
>> thing, but I only get this once I’ve run out of space.
>>
>>   1. Can I set Cyrus to prompt when the users’ mailbox reaches 90% 
>> usage?
>
>     Yes. The server sends what the IMAP protocol calls an ALERT. The 
> client is responsible for handling it accordingly. This usually means 
> a POPUP. You'll need to look through the imapd.conf man page to see 
> how its set.
>
>>   2. Is it possible to email an admin account when this happens? Many
>>      users don’t understand how to free space on the server and need
>>      assistance (save the comments please J ).
>
>      No, Not with the native software. We've written a script that
> will go through and send a message to the user letting them know that 
> they are filling up and generate a list of those people which then gets
> sent to the admins.
>
>>
>> Now here’s the part I don’t fully understand. As far as I can gather 
>> you’re responsible for moving mail off the server onto you local 
>> machine on some regular interval. Outlook seems to have this 
>> “Archiving feature” that’s responsible for this, but I’m not sure if 
>> this is the Microsoft way of doing things, or the right way of doing 
>> things.
>
>     Yes, the user is responsible. The IMAP protocol makes not effort
> to make this happen. Any ARCHIVE feature such as you mention is a 
> function of the client software.
>     
>
>> I don’t seem to find an “Archive” feature in Thunderbird. What am I 
>> missing here?
>
>     See above. The whole point of IMAP is to store the messages
> on the server. Keeping below an adminstratively imposed quota is the
> users responsibility. Sadly, not all users are responsible. :)
>
>>
>> Thanks
>> Warrick
>>
>> ---
>> Cyrus Home Page: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus
>> Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyruswiki.andrew.cmu.edu
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>
>
> Another space issue that new IMAP users sometimes have difficulty with 
> is the Trash model of deleting stuff. This is a client configurable 
> thing so some people see it, others may not. But they move a message
> to Trash when they delete and don't empty the Trash. It will still use
> their quota.  And if they keep copies of sent messages on the Server,
> same deal. They use quota.
>
> Have fun.
>
> Regards,
> Earl Shannon

Thanks Earl,

That's what I was afraid of. Sounds to me like the people who aren't 
going to "get" this concept should keep using POP3 :)

1. Does anyone have "best practices" that I can share with users on how 
they should move mail off the server when their quota is exceeded?

2. What is considered a reasonable quota (I know this is a very broad 
question)? When working with POP3 I would allocate users a max of 50 MB, 
when does a mailbox have so many messages that it puts a burden on the 
server?

Thanks
Warrick




---
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