... but anyway, I'd like to thank you all. Wietses, Viktors, Sams, Brians, Jonathans and all their crew ... the crew on the Openldap list - Howard, Kurt, Quanah, many more, on whom all the foregoing is utterly dependent and without all whose knowledge the infidels (Balmer, Gates, McNealey, Darl McBrides and other worms) would reign. Oh, and Immannel Derks, of whom none of you have ever heard. My colleague and friend :)

900+ user RHASL3 Linux LTSP Openldap-based desktop, email and authentication, 5 x IBM-eServer constellation going into the air without any problems not solved by reading the docs and practicing, practicing, practicing. And mailing lists.

All my own practice (colleague did his own thing) was on Compaq Presario and IBM Thinkpad notebooks - uptimes of up to 19 days. The point, Viktor and Wietse, of using notebooks as servers is, that development can be done at somewhere-else and the notebook dragged with one on buses, taxis, foot to the customer, who is then convinced *and buys*. Nuff said.

I simply have to think of the technology behind the whole FLOSS thing - unbelievably much. The way that each software component mentioned above simply slots in to the other. "It just works". And this is reasonably complex stuff to put together. "Complex?" Well, just think of "man" and do 'ls -l /bin /usr/bin /usr/bin/X11', etc. Read all the man pages.

I finally have *no* reason any longer for booting Windows on any of my own machines (hmmm ... notebooks), after my bank *finally* produced a single techie amongst a hundred other Windows techies who explained about Blackdown Java and how I could use it with Linux to make irrevocable payments *without* having to use IE6 and ActiveX. God, how I loathe Windows.

Anyway: I asked Ralf H. on the Postfix list about a year ago, about how long he thought it would take to learn Postfix adequately (with a number of years as mailadmin before). He reckoned a couple of months. No way, Ralf - not if you're to solve all customer problems. Reckon on a year or so.

Okke so' er/Iallefall/In ieder geval: Renewed thanks. I very rarely post questions; reading docs and *practicing*, trying things out for oneself, is the key. Neither do I post many help answers - others do it far better than me and are that much further ahead - mostly I learn from them, without their examples, I'd have given up long ago. Just thanks to the software lists mentioned above and the "lights" (many more than I've mentioned by name) to whom I look up in enormous admiration.

--Tonni

Happiness is having your cat jump in through the window and greet you, with the light summer dew yet a few seconds wet on his coat.