Subject:
Proposed HOWTO: Heavy-MailUser-HOWTO.xml
From:
"s. keeling" ####@####.####
Date:
12 Jun 2004 23:00:07 -0000
Message-Id: <20040612225849.GB25914@infidel.spots.ab.ca>
Abstract:
Describe how to manage a relatively heavy load of email traffic
(from the user's perspective), including listmail, even over a
dialup line, even on obsolescent, under-powered and antiquated
systems.
Some time ago, someone mentioned they were having a tough time keeping
up with the existing level of email they had to deal with. I replied
that with the right setup, it's not all that difficult. They then
suggested I write up my system as a HOWTO. I whacked it out in HTML
and put it up on my website, where it languished in sublime obscurity.
Now, I've managed to translate it into a potential, real honest to
goodness, HOWTO (in hand coded XML). It even validates! :-) However,
I am still working on it. Comments are welcome, of course. I'm aware
it could use restructuring in parts. I've yet to see the processed
output (see below).
Please pardon the often flippant writing style. It's not a doctoral
thesis.
The XML source is at:
<http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling/Heavy-MailUser-HOWTO.xml>
Anticipating questions:
- This is a new HOWTO created by myself.
- This does not use (except tangentially) any other HOWTOs that I
know of.
- Though this does reach from the user's ISP's mailhost to the
user's desktop MUA, my guess is this will fall under 4.5.2 "User
Applications" in
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/categories.html
- I do not expect this to replace other documents already in the
collection.
- There are other documents that very possibly do contain some of
the same information, or closely related information. There
already is a Mail-User-HOWTO (Eric S. Raymond) and a
Mutt-GnuPG-PGP-HOWTO (Andrés Seco and J. Horacio M.G.).
[BTW, I chose Heavy-MailUser-HOWTO before I was aware of the
existence of Raymond's Mail-User-HOWTO. The resemblance in the
names is coincidental.]
- The former is a fairly "high level" introduction to Linux mail.
Very few configuration details are offered, and the reader is
more often than not referred to other documentation for detailed
information. It's also getting a little long in the tooth; he
seems to think a ~/.forward is for forwarding mail to another
machine or for running a vacation program! As everyone
knows by now, ~/.forward is for feeding procmail. :-) [Yes,
that's a joke.]
- The Mutt-GnuPG-PGP-HOWTO deals exclusively with mutt and PKE
integration. It, like the Mail-User-HOWTO is fairly dated (both
are from 2000). [It's also in need of a language review; no
offense intended, Andrés and J.]
- As well, such topics as filtering mail, and installing and
configuring MTAs, MDAs, and MUAs, are all mentioned elsewhere in
one way or another, but not as an integrated system.
My emphasis in this is concentration on the workstation user
who needs to set up a stable and reliable environment which:
- Scales to handle Spam/UCE/UBE, even at present (2004) levels.
- Manages a relatively heavy load of traffic (from the user's
perspective), including listmail, even over a dialup line, even on
obsolescent, under-powered and likely antiquated systems.
- Manages to perform well on a (typical ca. 2001 era) desktop or
laptop box.
- Relies primarily on traditional, stable (even the somewhat ancient
Debian Woody/stable), classic Unix character based applications
(as opposed to GUI). Almost none of this is dependent upon an X
Window GUI interface.
- Integrates well with other mail related activities, such as Usenet
News.
As it says in the source, "Feel free to ask questions, comment, submit
bug fixes, or even flame mercilously if you think I've done something
stupid."
Otherwise, enjoy. :-)
As for the processed output, I'm currently researching tools:
sgmltools-lite
Jade/OpenJade
cost
docbook-utils
docbook-xml-simple
docbook-xsl
docbook-xsl-stylesheets
openjade
openjade1.3
sp
xml2
Those are the related packages I see are available for Debian/stable.
Please comment. What do I need? What is wretched excess? What
duplicates something that's available elsewhere? Right now,
processing the xml source into html would at least show me how bad all
this is going to look. I've tried using xml2:
xml2 < Heavy-MailUser-HOWTO.xml Heavy-MailUser-HOWTO.html
That gives me a bizarre dump of something that looks nothing like
html:
/book/bookinfo/title=Heavy Mail User HOWTO
/book/bookinfo/authorgroup/author/firstname=Stephen
/book/bookinfo/authorgroup/author/surname=Keeling
####@####.####
/book/bookinfo/revhistory/revision/revnumber=0.2
/book/bookinfo/revhistory/revision/date=2004-6-10
/book/bookinfo/revhistory/revision/authorinitials=sbk
/book/bookinfo/revhistory/revision/revremark=Initial Conversion From HTML To XML
...
I'm also suffering somewhat from an ignorance of XML. I believe I
could use a reference of allowed tags, and transformations such as
<> for "<>". Some of my <screen>shots</screen> taken from
config files may be giving my xml interpreter fits (though xmllint and
nsgmls (?) say it's okay), so I'm going to have to fix these somehow.
Pointers to references are welcome.
--
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(*) http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling
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