ychaouche
Valued Member
Postfix
* needs a place to check wether an e-mail address is valid
* needs a place to store email address aliases
Cyrus
* if you need to send email from outside your network then postfix needs to authenticates you. Popular choices are Cyrus and Dovecot. Cyrus needs a place to store logins and passwords.
Courier
* needs a place to store logins and passwords for IMAP authentication
* needs a place to store maildir locations and quota information for mail delivery
If every service has to use its own format-specific database, changing an email address would have to be done in three different places. This is why a mysql setup is a popular choice.
In addition, usually the simple format-specific databases that each of these software uses store the password in clear text, that means they're unencrypted. If anyone gets a copy of the database, he could easily read all passwords. With mysql you can encrypt the data.
This is not a question, it's just how I understand things. I posted this here in the hope that it will sparkle some interesting comments and help me learn more or see my mistakes.
* needs a place to check wether an e-mail address is valid
* needs a place to store email address aliases
Cyrus
* if you need to send email from outside your network then postfix needs to authenticates you. Popular choices are Cyrus and Dovecot. Cyrus needs a place to store logins and passwords.
Courier
* needs a place to store logins and passwords for IMAP authentication
* needs a place to store maildir locations and quota information for mail delivery
If every service has to use its own format-specific database, changing an email address would have to be done in three different places. This is why a mysql setup is a popular choice.
In addition, usually the simple format-specific databases that each of these software uses store the password in clear text, that means they're unencrypted. If anyone gets a copy of the database, he could easily read all passwords. With mysql you can encrypt the data.
This is not a question, it's just how I understand things. I posted this here in the hope that it will sparkle some interesting comments and help me learn more or see my mistakes.