On Sun, 2005-06-19 at 23:22, Jimmy Bradley wrote:
I'm really doing it for the learning part of it. If Bellsouth's smtp server is down when I need to send an email, I just turn to either yahoo, or hotmail, and write and send my email from there. The machine that I'm using is a Dell Poweredge 2300 with 3 9.1 scuzzy hard drives. The machine was givien to me, and it's somewhat outdated. All it has in it is a 500mghrtz single processor, so if I do something wrong and the machine implodes, I'm not out any cash.
Why don't you start by setting up local email (which amounts to making sure that sendmail and dovecot are activated) and configuring one or more clients (evolution/kmail/outlook). After the local side is working, fire up fetchmail to grab your mail from your ISP account and deliver it into your local system. Your sendmail should be configured to forward through your ISP's server anyway because many recipients will use spam filtering that discards most dialup/cable modem/dsl ranges.
After that all works and you still want to completely control the account, you can set up your own DNS domain name, reconfigure sendmail to allow remote reception, and accept mail directly from the internet.