best practice: storing user input as application wide config

example: a webmail application is deployed as a war-file to a server. the fresh deployed app now needs to read info from the user (mail-host, username, password, etc.).

what is the best way to store this information permanently on the serverside for as long as the app is not undeployed (i.e. persistent even after server reboot)?

thx

[354 byte] By [CapMa] at [2007-11-27 11:16:42]