Re: [courier-users] Beyond USERDB

[Alessandro V. <ve...@ta...>]

Alexander Erameh wrote:
>  I am planning implementing Courier in an environment with over 500 
> users which may eventually grow to almost One thousand so I decided to 
> check what kind of authentication to use. I was surprised to see the 
> above because I remember someone once said on the list that USERDB is 
> recommended for a couple of hundred users.

As Joseph has thoroughly explained, the usability limit is reached 
because of updates, not the total number of records per se. One may 
assume users change their email address every T seconds. Thus, N users 
imply an addition or removal every T/(2N) seconds, on average. When 
that happens daily or hourly it is going to be a hindrance. For 
N=1000, you'd rebuild daily if T is approx. 5.5 years. However, T may 
vary so widely, even on average, that variations by a factor of 10 can 
be easily justified.

> I have come to love USERDB because it is simple to implement. However, I 
> have one question for you Courier Experts. Is it *_practically_* 
> feasible to use USERDB with 500 – 1000 users. If not, what do you 
> recommend.?

The one you're most familiar with. You may want to use the same 
passwords also for other kinds of access to local systems, e.g. web 
stuff served by Apache. Making such considerations may also help 
making a decision.

Hth