On 01/19/2018 05:29 AM, Patrick Goetz wrote:The biggest ongoing problem with Cyrus is the documentation, not that it's harder to install. Cyrus is, if anything, easier to install than Dovecot (modulo distro packaging, which is the main difference here). The Dovecot guy writes very good documentation, and until recently trying to get information about how to set up Cyrus was like pulling teeth. I'm always having to appeal to this list whenever an issue comes up. Recently I set up a vacation notification system. Super easy AFTER A MONTH SPENT researching how to do it. I'm still not completely clear on how to set up multiple virtual mailhosts, either; my next onerous email research project. I'm sorry, and don't wish to start a flame war here, but can't just let this comment pass. Fastmail are dedicated to improving the documentation of Cyrus, and have on staff a person, Nicola Nye <nicolan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, for that specific reason. They've spent a bundle of money to improve the documentation, as have other organizations like Kolab and Onlight (my firm). Last year Onlight flew me to Melbourne for two weeks, to set up camp in the Fastmail offices and write documentation. While I will agree that improvement is still needed, a remarkable amount has been done in the past few years. It's the nature of almost all Open Source packages that documentation often lags behind features, unless the docs and code are being written by the same people. Another issue common to many FOSS software is that people write documentation which addresses needs they perceive, just like people write software which addresses needs they perceive. For example, I recently needed to migrate older Cyrus installations from 2.5.11 to 3.0.5, and to add Xapian indexing. I couldn't make sense of the existing docs, so I interrogated Bron and others, and rewrote those docs, along with touching up other sections which dealt with the various supported partitioning types. Cyrus is a very capable and scalable email platform, provides a lot of flexibility and supports a lot of options. This necessarily makes it more complex to configure, and more complex to document. My advice to anyone who is having trouble understanding or deploying a feature is to come here or to the cyrus-dev list, and ask questions: https://cyrusimap.org/imap/support/feedback-mailing-lists.html If you need to know how to do something and feel it isn't well documented, ask in the lists, on IRC, or log a ticket at Github. Seriously on that last one. If you log an issue on Github, it will get seen to, by myself or others. https://github.com/cyrusimap/cyrus-imapd/issues As for your next challenge, the term "virtual mailhosts" is a bit vague, so I'm not sure which way to steer you. Do you mean Virtual Domains; one server receiving and hosting mail for multiple email domains? If so, start here: https://cyrusimap.org/imap/concepts/features/virtual-domains.html?highlight=virtual If you mean something else, please follow up with a separate message on this list or IRC (https://cyrusimap.org/imap/support/feedback-irc.html). Lastly, I would remiss not to mention that we will always welcome user contributions to the documentation. If you feel you solved an undocumented, or poorly documented problem, please let us know what you did, what you learnt, how you solved the issue. If you can even just write up an email description of the problem and solution, we can shape it into documentation. Often the best documentation evolves out of a user solving a problem and then sharing their new knowledge. Cheers, -nic -- Nic Bernstein nic@xxxxxxxxxxx Onlight Inc. www.onlight.com 6525 W Bluemound Rd., Ste 24 v. 414.272.4477 Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53213-4073 f. 414.290.0335 |
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