Noob Mail Server - Suggestion?

C

Carlosinfl

Loves the juice
Joined
Sep 25, 2002
Messages
6,633
I am thinking about dumping my Exchange 2000 server in my moms closet since it has to be reset every other day or crashes - I run all Linux machines (Fedora Core 2) from my house and was wondering if there is simple mail server solution for me?

I heard send mail is great but very hard to set up... :(
 
qmail if you don't want to use Sendmail. There is also Postfix and I think, Exim.
 
I don't care about using x-comapany - I just need something that is easy to install and administrate.

Is q-mail simple and easy to use or moderate ?
 
I'd say qmail and sendmail are the same level of difficulty (hard learning curve at first), but then again, I have only really used Sendmail.

Seriously, just read the manual. Things get easy (or easier) if you just bother to RTFM.

http://cr.yp.to/qmail.html - official Qmail site. Really bland.
http://www.lifewithqmail.org/ - an unofficial QMail site. Has a setup guide.

www.sendmail.org - Sendmail's site. Has a pretty good manual for setting up Sendmail.

I have no experience with Procmail, Exim, or others not listed.
 
How can I tell if my installation of FC2 has sendmail already installed? Is there a way to tell?
 
I'm a sendmail whore. :) Google for "freebsd sendmail imap" and my page will be #1. The directions are for FreeBSD, but they may be useful to you as well as far as configs and such go.

To find out if sendmail's installed, how about trying "rpm -q sendmail"? If you installed the machine and you don't know if you've built it from source, chances are good it's either there in RPM form or not there at all.
 
I have nothing against Sendmail but you should give Postfix a try. Easy to learn, fast and secure.
 
Agreed, Sendmail is very difficult to configure, which can lead to security problems. Postfix is a really good alternitive, and I have used it myself. Plus it doesnt have its own book just for the configuration file(s). (unlike sendmail, and the book isn't small either)
 
carloswill said:
How can I tell if my installation of FC2 has sendmail already installed? Is there a way to tell?
Click to expand...

rpm -qa | grep -i sendmail
 
Postfix provides all of the functionality I need without forcing me to learn arcane configuration hieroglyphics.

I found that phrase kind of funny - from all the reading I see, send mail sounds very very complicated and that is something I am really not looking for as I will most likely need help even installing my mail server application let alone setting it up - extremely new to linux :eek:
 
Sendmail has too many holes and bugs for me to have faith in it. Qmail doesn't implement some functions and also has a goofy config style, but it runs like a diesel when you get it going. Postfix... I dunno, played with it a few times, crashed it a few more, gave up and moved on. It almost hurts to say it, but most of this is user preference.
 
Snugglebear said:
Sendmail has too many holes and bugs for me to have faith in it. Qmail doesn't implement some functions and also has a goofy config style, but it runs like a diesel when you get it going. Postfix... I dunno, played with it a few times, crashed it a few more, gave up and moved on. It almost hurts to say it, but most of this is user preference.
Click to expand...

Surgemail is the email server IMHO. I used Postfix exclusively for a while until I found out what email server my ISP uses. Then I tried Surgemail and I love it. Built-in out of the box SPAM filtering, webmail, virus filtering via Avast anti-virus(Win version only), web based GUI for administration and etc. Free for home use (5 users).

It runs on Windows/BSD/Linux. You install the package answer a couple of questions and BAM, you have a very powerful email server. All administration is done via the web GUI.

Check out my webmail http://www.bnettech.net:7080 This is the default setup out of the box.
 
i run qmail.. there is a nice php app called qmailadmin that i use to administer it.. but i also run gentoo, and there is a great qmail tutorial for it on there site.
 
wow - so many options... :confused:

I just want something with a nice interface and is very easy to admin GUI or command line.
Right now
-sendmail looks way too advanced for me
-surgemail looks very nice and I like the webmail options too ;)
-postfix seem sokay but I guess I just need to try it. Is it GUI interface at all?
 
I suggest qmail. It's really not that hard to configure and the lifewithqmail docs will get you there 100%. In fact, the multiple file based settings and daemontools sevice manager are pretty neat. Through some secure auth stuff on top of it as well as courier-imap-ssl and you're golden. You could take it a step further and add built in spam filtering/tagging and clam-av virus scanning as well.

side note: I believe there is an outstanding monetary sum for finding a hole in qmail. It's been outstanding for years. (sadly, this does not apply if you alter the original qmail install w/ patches)
 
Ok,

Lets say I do decide to go with qmail ... I was told that this will only be the MTA (Mail Transfer Authority) just like send mail would be and would also need something called MDA (Mail Delivery Authority)

Will this be the case with:

surgemail
qmail
postfix

:confused:
 
oogie said:
rpm -qa | grep -i sendmail
Click to expand...

Code: 
[carlos@carlwill carlos]$ rpm -qa | grep -i sendmail
sendmail-cf-8.12.11-4.6
sendmail-8.12.11-4.6

So it looks like I do have send mail but I have no idea how to access send mail or if there even is a GUI?

Code: 
[root@carlwill root]# sendmail
Recipient names must be specified

It looks like I will be going to try and use postfix. From what I hear, it is simple. http://www.postfix.org/

Now I don't know if I should completely remove sendmail from my machine or if that will even matter? Anyone know? If you recommend I get rid of sendmail, how should I do so?

NextI see a download link at http://www.postfix.org/ but it says source by that... :confused: What does that mean? Should I be installing this a specific way in to my Fedora system?
 
carloswill said:
Code: 
[carlos@carlwill carlos]$ rpm -qa | grep -i sendmail
sendmail-cf-8.12.11-4.6
sendmail-8.12.11-4.6

So it looks like I do have send mail but I have no idea how to access send mail or if there even is a GUI?

Code: 
[root@carlwill root]# sendmail
Recipient names must be specified

It looks like I will be going to try and use postfix. From what I hear, it is simple. http://www.postfix.org/

Now I don't know if I should completely remove sendmail from my machine or if that will even matter? Anyone know? If you recommend I get rid of sendmail, how should I do so?


No GUI for sendmail or Postfix.



NextI see a download link at http://www.postfix.org/ but it says source by that... :confused: What does that mean? Should I be installing this a specific way in to my Fedora system?
Click to expand...


You need to uninstall sendmail. If you are using Fedora just go into add/remove programs and select sendmail to uninstall. Or you could maybe just disable it from starting. "chkconfig sendmail off"


No GUI for sendmail or Postfix. to uninstall sendmail from terminal "rpm -e sendmail"

Installing from source means you will have to to "make" and etc. If you would rather install by rpm package this place has postfix rpm packages Also you could use the RedHat update service to get the latest rpm package for Fedora if you choose.
 
If you want to run sendmail then you need to run it with arguments such as -bd -q and whatnot but your distro should have a nice start script to begin with :D.

Postfix on the other hand is meant as a sendmail replacement and it even provides much of sendmail functionality with its wrapper program sendmail. Unless you want to dig deeper and learn about the build process, i'd suggest you get the rpms and install that way.But uninstall sendmail first.

Postfix has no fancy guis but the comments in main.cf should be easy to understand and when you change 2 or 3 things there, that's all its needed for a basic setup. But the default installation should work out of the box.

There's tons of really good howto docs on postfix.org site should you need to consult them. Have fun!
 
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