I am creating a web based system for users to check their mail. this involves three separate machines (ldap, web, pop). so far what i have is:
  1. a user authenticates through apache mod_auth_ldap to access the directory.
  2. the script takes their username from %ENV and asks the ldap server what their mail password is.
  3. the script checks their mail headers from the pop server and shows the user a list of from/subject etc for them to click on
  4. clicking on an email calls a new script that starts the process all over again, grabbing the email password from ldap and the complete mail that the user wants to read.

potentially there could be ~150k users of this system, though i figure the actual usage will be MUCH lower. at this point i'm only being asked to produce something that 'works,' e.g. i am supposed to worry about scalability later. i have something that works, but i would like to worry about scaling now to save myself future troubles.

the first major problem i saw is that i have to grab the password from ldap every time i want to do something. i'm not sure of the best way to avoid this. the second script isn't called from a form. it's just passed a message number to download. i could hack mod_auth_cgi to put the password in the environment, but that seems like a bad idea for some reason.

i've used zope before and i think it solves some of my problems, but i didn't really like using it at all. maybe it has improved or there is something better out there.

i am wondering what potential problems/solutions you might know about from experience with such a system.

In reply to suggestions for web pop email system by archon

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