virtual alias vs. virtual mailbox for hundreds of domains(Sendmail to Postfix Migration)

Hello,
We've got an old sendmail box running on fc2 that we're going to be
upgrading to postfix running on CentOS4. We host literally hundreds of
domains, some with a single user others with multiple users. Currently our
sendmail setup has each user with a Unix account, needless to say our
password files are huge. We don't have a lot of overlap between usernames,
i.e. we don't have two user1 users so currently that isn't an issue. I'm
wondering given our setup, which would be better virtual alias or virtual
mailbox domains? I'm leaning toward virtual mailbox, but would appreciate
some practical experiences. In addition, a majority of our user's either get
their mail via pop, i think now is the good time to add authenticated smtp
with tls for this, and others prefer a webmail solution. We use usermin, (I
did not set that up) and i want to move away from this. I'm thinking
squirrelmail, but am not sure if it'll work with our virtual domains.
Finally we'll be adding a web control panel so user's can administer more of
their own accounts, plesk i was last told.
I'm looking for any compatibility issues i might encounter with all
this, any practical user experiences with this or similar setups, and any
alternative webmail or setups to consider. I am particularly nervous about
moving the customers away from sendmail, as i don't know it at all and not
sure how it's set up, though i'll be relieved when it is done.
Thanks a lot.
Dave.

Since you're mapping email addresses to mailboxes, and not mapping them
to other email addresses, virtual_mailbox_domains is correct thing to use,
rather than virtual_alias_domains.

Postfix supports both TLS and SMTP AUTH (using Cyrus SASL).

I have no comments on the web access stuff.
--
Greg




Dave wrote:
> Hello,
> We've got an old sendmail box running on fc2 that we're going to be
> upgrading to postfix running on CentOS4. We host literally hundreds of
> domains, some with a single user others with multiple users. Currently our
> sendmail setup has each user with a Unix account, needless to say our
> password files are huge. We don't have a lot of overlap between usernames,
> i.e. we don't have two user1 users so currently that isn't an issue. I'm
> wondering given our setup, which would be better virtual alias or virtual
> mailbox domains? I'm leaning toward virtual mailbox, but would appreciate
> some practical experiences. In addition, a majority of our user's either get
> their mail via pop, i think now is the good time to add authenticated smtp
> with tls for this, and others prefer a webmail solution. We use usermin, (I
> did not set that up) and i want to move away from this. I'm thinking
> squirrelmail, but am not sure if it'll work with our virtual domains.
> Finally we'll be adding a web control panel so user's can administer more of
> their own accounts, plesk i was last told.
> I'm looking for any compatibility issues i might encounter with all
> this, any practical user experiences with this or similar setups, and any
> alternative webmail or setups to consider. I am particularly nervous about
> moving the customers away from sendmail, as i don't know it at all and not
> sure how it's set up, though i'll be relieved when it is done.
> Thanks a lot.
> Dave.
>
>