A question no doubt asked a thousand times...

[Guest]

I realize this is of course a silly question, but has anyone here used the Mail::Toaster scripts as templates for a similar Linux toaster?  I ask because I use a Linux VPS hosting service that I am quite happy with (http://www.linode.com/" target="_blank">Linode.com), and software that I cannot readily port to FreeBSD (http://www.oracle.com/database/" target="_blank">Oracle).  Has anyone adapted the scripts for a package-based Linux distro, or even simply used them as instruction for building a similar toaster?  If so, how hard was it?

p.s. I didn't see any question like this on a cursory search, and I hope it wasn't because anyone who asked it is deleted along with their post!  

[matt]

I have not seen anyone do this, but it would seem a logic thing to do. Use the build scripts to generate the working system, then extend them a bit to package it all up into an installer.

The disadvantage to all that is that the new mail systems admin doesn't learn as much during the process.

[Xenophon]

I was actually wondering if anyone had adapted the build scripts themselves.  Gentoo's Portage system is (to a great degree) similar to the BSD ports system.  That way the admin sees it all being built, just as if they used the regular setup script.

Discalimer: I haven't looked at the build scripts yet, so I don't know how hard  it would be.  Hopefully all of the patches work across platforms...

[shealey]

Actually we have the toaster running on a Sun Sparc release of Gentoo Linux (Kernel 2.4).

An associate of mine who is a Perl wizard has adapted the bits of the toaster install code which deal with FreeBSD ports so that it plays nicely with Gentoo's 'emerge' utility which controls its ports tree. There are various other tweaks he had to make to work around the occasional FreeBSD specific nuance of the toaster code, but in general its been working nicely for a year now.

Sean.

[matt]

So why haven't those modified bits been sent back to me in patch files?

[shealey]

:-)

a) Time.

b) The mods weren't finished to the point where it made sense to merge them into the production toaster last time we discussed this.

c) Our release of the toaster has fallen behind yours because of A and B.

You're right - I'll prod him back into action next time we get together for a beer - we need to upgrade our toaster anyway!