hipl-core team mailing list archive

[Christoph Viethen <viethen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey,

On Aug 30, 2010, at 3:30 AM, Mircea Gherzan wrote:

> This boils down to whether an event-driven approach can be used instead of the
> current polling-based one (running the script via cron).

Yes.

> When using an intermediary "mail processor", POP3 is not an option: there's
> still an app *polling* the POP3 mailbox and then firing up the script. 
> 
> So there only one alternative: using IMAP with IDLE support (push mail). Yes,
> the Sun Java System Messaging Server supports this. A python/whatever script
> might be continuously connected to the mail server and, upon receiving
> notification of a new mail, fire up the script.

I actually did have something (somewhat) simpler in mind: mail servers tend to get their messages by SMTP, so I was envisioning to just have a script triggered directly by the incoming mail, through configuration of - e.g. - one of i4's mail servers (in its config file, or a .forward file or similar). I mean, this is just my ole' admin's perspective - that's the way I would do it on "my" server.

I agree, though, that it involves a) some cooperation by another entity (admins at i4) and b) somebody who would be willing to maintain such a script, fix it when it causes the admins to be unhappy, be available to answer funny questions (again and again) whenever somebody discovers there's a "strange script" running on "his" mail server (the admin duties of which he just took over from a predecessor), and so on.

> But, if the powers that be decide it's worth, I'm willing implement this
> alternative solution.

If the administrative powers one day feel like having a script run on the actual mail server would be a good idea, doing it that way looks somewhat more elegant. Considering a) and b), though, just doing it the way it's done right now seems to be the most simple and maintainable solution at this point in time.

Thanks a lot!

Cheers,

 Christoph

-- 
viethen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx