Part I--Information to Users Regarding Banyan
Mail.
The machine called "banyan.imsc.res.in" is the mail server for all machines at IMSc. What this means for the user:
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In your mail program you must use "banyan" as the (IMAP) server which stores all your new mail and folders.
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In your mail program you must use "banyan" as the (SMTP) server which will handle all outgoing mail.
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Users of mail programs that cannot be configured as above must use alternative approaches which are available. It is probably easier to switch to a mail program that can be configured as above.
Other services.
The following additional services are available on "banyan.imsc.res.in".
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The machine allows users to login to a shell account using "ssh".
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650 MB of disk quota is alloted per-user for users to keep their files including mail.
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Various mail handling utilities like "vacation", "procmail", "maildrop" and "sieve" are available on "banyan".
Future plans.
The following features are planned for this machine.
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Simplified spam handling. The spam filtering program "spamassassin" is currently available in "daemon" mode on "banyan". We will soon provide instructions on how you can use it to filter your mail.
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Simplified CD based backup. The reason for keeping the quota as 650MB is that this is the size of a writable CD. We will soon provide instructions on how you can keep a repository of important files on this server and write-it to a CD when required.
Part II - "To Do" List for Banyan
User facilities
The scripts/files mentioned in I-C need to be written and provided. Some instructions for users need to be given as well.
LDAP and user info
We should setup "banyan" as the primary LDAP and user info server for the network. This means that we can use "banyan" not only for "password" but for also for public keys.
LDAP and host info
Secondly, the host entries for each of the machines on IMSc should be kept here. Only those hosts that need to be given a public IP can be extracted via "ldap2dns" or some script.
Other plans
We should monitor the load on this machine. Perhaps it can be used for more services.