Hi guys, I realize that this might be considered to be off topic, but the machine I want to use is running Cent OS. Ok, this is what I'm thinking about trying, and mainly just to see if I can do it. I've got a total of 3 linux machines here, and I was thinking about setting one of them up as an email server. Now, I'm not talking about setting the machine up so that all I run on it is an email client like thunderbird, or evolution and retrieve email from my email account at bellsouth. What I want to try and do is set the machine up so that my machine is the email server, and I retrieve my email from it. Is what I'm thinking about even possible, or am I just simply having a case of too much oxygen on the brain? If what I'm thinking about is possible, how would I go about doing it? Thanks Jimmy
Jimmy Bradley wrote:
Hi guys, I realize that this might be considered to be off topic, but themachine I want to use is running Cent OS. Ok, this is what I'm thinking about trying, and mainly just to see if I can do it. I've got a total of 3 linux machines here, and I was thinking about setting one of them up as an email server. Now, I'm not talking about setting the machine up so that all I run on it is an email client like thunderbird, or evolution and retrieve email from my email account at bellsouth. What I want to try and do is set the machine up so that my machine is the email server, and I retrieve my email from it. Is what I'm thinking about even possible, or am I just simply having a case of too much oxygen on the brain? If what I'm thinking about is possible, how would I go about doing it? Thanks Jimmy
Add BQ http://bluequartz.org/ to your CentOS platform and you will have a full f leg email server with a GUI....
Best Regards, Jon McCauley
Jimmy Bradley wrote:
Hi guys, I realize that this might be considered to be off topic, but themachine I want to use is running Cent OS. Ok, this is what I'm thinking about trying, and mainly just to see if I can do it. I've got a total of 3 linux machines here, and I was thinking about setting one of them up as an email server. Now, I'm not talking about setting the machine up so that all I run on it is an email client like thunderbird, or evolution and retrieve email from my email account at bellsouth. What I want to try and do is set the machine up so that my machine is the email server, and I retrieve my email from it. Is what I'm thinking about even possible, or am I just simply having a case of too much oxygen on the brain? If what I'm thinking about is possible, how would I go about doing it? Thanks Jimmy
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
.
Go Here http://www.qmailrocks.org
Chris Weisiger wrote:
Go Here http://www.qmailrocks.org
Oy. You're directing someone who obviously knows little about setting up and administering a server to Dan Bernstein land? You might also want to let him know that he'll have to install all of Dan's other support programs first and that Dan is a flaming *** to deal with if you're one of the unwashed masses. 8-)
Postfix would probably be a much easier pill to swallow since it's also included with CentOS and is a lot easier to set up.
Postfix takes only a few minutes to setup on a virgin CentOS box and you won't have to download any 3rd party extras to make it work.
Cheers,
C
On Jun 19, 2005, at 10:45 PM, Chris Mauritz wrote:
Oy. You're directing someone who obviously knows little about setting up and administering a server to Dan Bernstein land? You might also want to let him know that he'll have to install all of Dan's other support programs first and that Dan is a flaming *** to deal with if you're one of the unwashed masses. 8-)
Postfix takes only a few minutes to setup on a virgin CentOS box and you won't have to download any 3rd party extras to make it work.
oh, whatever - there's *extensive* documentation, which largely insulates users from having to actually deal with djb at all.
for a turnkey mail server solution i would recommend the Qmail Toaster:
it's a RPM-based solution that provides not only SMTP service but also IMAP, POP, webmail, virtual domains, web-based configuration, autoresponders, spam and virus filtering... and it's designed to be compatible with CentOS 3 and 4 (among other distros). good stuff.
-steve
p.s. but again, this sounds like overkill for what the OP apparently wants to do.
--- If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. - Fabian, Twelfth Night, III,v
I agree, what I'm trying to do is overkill, but I'm doing it for a couple of reasons. First for the learning experience, second, bellsouth has problems with their smtp server at the worst times, and being able to send and receive email is a critical part of my job. You're right. I know nothing about administering a server of anykind, this would be a good time to learn. I guess one question I need to ask now is, how do I go about getting an unused domain name for my machine? Also, bellsouth said that I would not be violating my service agreement. Thanks Jimmy On Sun, 2005-06-19 at 22:55 -0400, Steve Huff wrote:
On Jun 19, 2005, at 10:45 PM, Chris Mauritz wrote:
Oy. You're directing someone who obviously knows little about setting up and administering a server to Dan Bernstein land? You might also want to let him know that he'll have to install all of Dan's other support programs first and that Dan is a flaming *** to deal with if you're one of the unwashed masses. 8-)
Postfix takes only a few minutes to setup on a virgin CentOS box and you won't have to download any 3rd party extras to make it work.
oh, whatever - there's *extensive* documentation, which largely insulates users from having to actually deal with djb at all.
for a turnkey mail server solution i would recommend the Qmail Toaster:
it's a RPM-based solution that provides not only SMTP service but also IMAP, POP, webmail, virtual domains, web-based configuration, autoresponders, spam and virus filtering... and it's designed to be compatible with CentOS 3 and 4 (among other distros). good stuff.
-steve
p.s. but again, this sounds like overkill for what the OP apparently wants to do.
If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. - Fabian, Twelfth Night, III,v
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Jun 19, 2005, at 11:49 PM, Jimmy Bradley wrote:
I agree, what I'm trying to do is overkill, but I'm doing it for a couple of reasons. First for the learning experience, second, bellsouth has problems with their smtp server at the worst times, and being able to send and receive email is a critical part of my job. You're right. I know nothing about administering a server of anykind, this would be a good time to learn. I guess one question I need to ask now is, how do I go about getting an unused domain name for my machine? Also, bellsouth said that I would not be violating my service agreement.
first off, to find an unused domain name, go to just about any registrar's home page (i've had good experiences with GoDaddy (http:// www.godaddy.com), but there are other good registrars as well) and you should find domain search functionality. if you don't have a fixed IP address, you may find a service such as ZoneEdit (http:// www.zoneedit.com) useful.
let's take a step back, though: are you undertaking this project because you need better mail service than bellsouth provides, or are you doing it to learn how to administer a mail server? i would suggest you pick one or the other: if you're learning, you will undoubtedly make mistakes, and that needs to be OK. if you're depending on this mail server to do your job, i'd recommend against using it for your learning experiences, because if it's mission- critical then when you screw up you're hurting yourself.
if you really want to learn nuts and bolts, stay away from turnkey or prepackaged solutions; build the various parts yourself, from source, and read all the documentation. if you want something that'll just work, go with qmailtoaster; however, bear in mind that it may be somewhat opaque or confusing if you want to set up anything that differs from the default configuration.
-steve
--- If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. - Fabian, Twelfth Night, III,v
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. Thanks for your concern. Jimmy
On Mon, 2005-06-20 at 00:03 -0400, Steve Huff wrote:
On Jun 19, 2005, at 11:49 PM, Jimmy Bradley wrote:
I agree, what I'm trying to do is overkill, but I'm doing it for a couple of reasons. First for the learning experience, second, bellsouth has problems with their smtp server at the worst times, and being able to send and receive email is a critical part of my job. You're right. I know nothing about administering a server of anykind, this would be a good time to learn. I guess one question I need to ask now is, how do I go about getting an unused domain name for my machine? Also, bellsouth said that I would not be violating my service agreement.
first off, to find an unused domain name, go to just about any registrar's home page (i've had good experiences with GoDaddy (http:// www.godaddy.com), but there are other good registrars as well) and you should find domain search functionality. if you don't have a fixed IP address, you may find a service such as ZoneEdit (http:// www.zoneedit.com) useful.
let's take a step back, though: are you undertaking this project because you need better mail service than bellsouth provides, or are you doing it to learn how to administer a mail server? i would suggest you pick one or the other: if you're learning, you will undoubtedly make mistakes, and that needs to be OK. if you're depending on this mail server to do your job, i'd recommend against using it for your learning experiences, because if it's mission- critical then when you screw up you're hurting yourself.
if you really want to learn nuts and bolts, stay away from turnkey or prepackaged solutions; build the various parts yourself, from source, and read all the documentation. if you want something that'll just work, go with qmailtoaster; however, bear in mind that it may be somewhat opaque or confusing if you want to set up anything that differs from the default configuration.
-steve
If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. - Fabian, Twelfth Night, III,v
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Sun, 2005-06-19 at 23:22 -0500, 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.
Jumping in....
Scenario: Even if Bell provides service and you are running only one account setting up a local email server can help que traffic and send it out once the dial up occurs.
Scenario: There are two or three (or many more) users in the local network trying to share a single connection. Local mail server here is helpful in sending and retrieving mail on regular basis and leave the users not having to worry about connectivity.
AND it is a good learning experience.
You can talk to your service provider and see if they give out sub- domains? Else you can register either domain (slightly expensive) or sub-domain (slightly less so) with service providers. Just google and you will come up with more that handful. Personally I have been using NetworkSolutions (expensive).
But if you setup domain MX record pointing to your server then it has to be on line always. Alternative is to point a higher MX record number to another server hosted somewhere else. OOOooooo. I think I am jumping the gun a little here and jumping into how to setup while you still have to decide on point one.
On Jun 20, 2005, at 12:22 AM, Jimmy Bradley wrote:
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.
ah, you may be misunderstanding: i'm not particularly concerned that your machine will fail, i'm concerned that you may lose mail, which is why i'd recommend setting up dummy accounts to do your initial learning.
-steve
--- If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. - Fabian, Twelfth Night, III,v
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. Thanks for your concern. Jimmy
Jimmy,
I guess you don't have a fixed ip too. You can register a free dynamic dns service. eg: something-you-choose.cjb.net go to www.cjb.net for details.
They can point the MX record for something-you-choose.cjb.net to something-you-choose.cjb.net which will be pointing to whatever ip you have been assigned.
installing qmail will be a good learning experience. Installation may require more steps than others but its configuration is the simplest there is and the dot-qmail mechanism the more powerful and flexible one available. Add to that the fact that you are also installing one of the most secure programs ever written which is yet good performance and light.
It comes with a pop3 server program so it will handle all your email service needs.
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.
On Jun 19, 2005, at 9:59 PM, Jimmy Bradley wrote:
Ok, this is what I'm thinking about trying, and mainly justto see if I can do it. I've got a total of 3 linux machines here, and I was thinking about setting one of them up as an email server. Now, I'm not talking about setting the machine up so that all I run on it is an email client like thunderbird, or evolution and retrieve email from my email account at bellsouth. What I want to try and do is set the machine up so that my machine is the email server, and I retrieve my email from it. Is what I'm thinking about even possible, or am I just simply having a case of too much oxygen on the brain? If what I'm thinking about is possible, how would I go about doing it?
since you already have a perfectly good email account at bellsouth, unless you want to host email service for your own domain, a full- fledged mail server is probably overkill. i suspect that what you want is fetchmail:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/
you configure it with the login information for your bellsouth email account and run it as a daemon on one of your CentOS boxes; you then run an IMAP service (dovecot, i believe, is the server you'd be using) on the CentOS box to serve your mail to your local network.
you'd need some sort of solution for outgoing mail - if you can use bellsouth's smtp server for outgoing mail, that would be the simplest.
here's a HOWTO that may be useful:
http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/networking/fetchmail.html
-steve
--- If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. - Fabian, Twelfth Night, III,v
Jimmy Bradley wrote:
Hi guys, I realize that this might be considered to be off topic, but themachine I want to use is running Cent OS. Ok, this is what I'm thinking about trying, and mainly just to see if I can do it. I've got a total of 3 linux machines here, and I was thinking about setting one of them up as an email server. Now, I'm not talking about setting the machine up so that all I run on it is an email client like thunderbird, or evolution and retrieve email from my email account at bellsouth. What I want to try and do is set the machine up so that my machine is the email server, and I retrieve my email from it. Is what I'm thinking about even possible, or am I just simply having a case of too much oxygen on the brain? If what I'm thinking about is possible, how would I go about doing it?
By default, you got MTA daemon (sendmail) installed on the system. All that you need to do is to configure it to accept mail from network. Install sendmail-cf and sendmail-doc RPMs. You need former to reconfigure sendmail. The later is documentation. Lot of usefull docs at www.sendmail.org too.
An alternative to sendmail is postfix. It is somewhat easier to configure, apperently. Postfix is also distributed with CentOS, but not installed by default.
Once you configure sendmail to accept email from network (by default it is configured not to even allow connections from remote hosts), you'll need a way to enable email clients to fetch email that is stored on the server. There are two IMAP/POP servers distributed with CentOS.
The first is called Dovecot. It is very basic, easy to understand and configure. It has all the features that average users needs from IMAP server.
The second option is Cyrus. It is fully fleged, state of the art IMAP server. For experienced folks. Can be non-trivial to configure, requires more administrative work than Dovecot, and you'd also need to reconfigure sendmail (or postfix) specifically to work with Cyrus.
My personal preference is Cyrus. If you had some previous experience with this kind of stuff, I'd probably try to interest you into it too. However, since you obviously have no experience with email servers, I'm going to recommend Dovecot to you. Cyrus only if you have extremely steep learning curve or if you are mazohist, or both ;-)
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On Sun, Jun 19, 2005 at 08:59:54PM -0500, Jimmy Bradley wrote:
Hi guys, I realize that this might be considered to be off topic, but themachine I want to use is running Cent OS. Ok, this is what I'm thinking about trying, and mainly just to see if I can do it. I've got a total of 3 linux machines here, and I was thinking about setting one of them up as an email server. Now, I'm not talking about setting the machine up so that all I run on it is an email client like thunderbird, or evolution and retrieve email from my email account at bellsouth. What I want to try and do is set the machine up so that my machine is the email server, and I retrieve my email from it. Is what I'm thinking about even possible, or am I just simply having a case of too much oxygen on the brain? If what I'm thinking about is possible, how would I go about doing it?
This is so fun :) Everyone will suggest their favorite e-mail server, and Jimmy will be even more lost than when he started.
For me, I suggest EXIM: http://www.exim.org/
[]s
- -- Rodrigo Barbosa rodrigob@suespammers.org "Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur" "Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)
This is so fun :) Everyone will suggest their favorite e-mail server, and Jimmy will be even more lost than when he started.
For me, I suggest EXIM: http://www.exim.org/
let's not leave out courier then :)
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On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 12:12:48AM +0800, Feizhou wrote:
This is so fun :) Everyone will suggest their favorite e-mail server, and Jimmy will be even more lost than when he started.
For me, I suggest EXIM: http://www.exim.org/
let's not leave out courier then :)
And ZMailer ! Lets not forget zmailer ! And and ... S/MAIL :)
Btw, I find EXIM + Courier-imap a VERY nice combo. Using it on all my servers.
[]s
- -- Rodrigo Barbosa rodrigob@suespammers.org "Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur" "Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)
Rodrigo Barbosa wrote:
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On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 12:12:48AM +0800, Feizhou wrote:
This is so fun :) Everyone will suggest their favorite e-mail server, and Jimmy will be even more lost than when he started.
For me, I suggest EXIM: http://www.exim.org/
let's not leave out courier then :)
And ZMailer ! Lets not forget zmailer ! And and ... S/MAIL :)
Btw, I find EXIM + Courier-imap a VERY nice combo. Using it on all my servers.
:D
So long as you stay away from cyrus....don't want to deal with corrupt indexes.
I do postfix + qmail + vpopmail + courier-imap + clamav + spamassassin + squirrelmail :)
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On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 12:25:15AM +0800, Feizhou wrote:
This is so fun :) Everyone will suggest their favorite e-mail server, and Jimmy will be even more lost than when he started.
For me, I suggest EXIM: http://www.exim.org/
let's not leave out courier then :)
And ZMailer ! Lets not forget zmailer ! And and ... S/MAIL :)
Btw, I find EXIM + Courier-imap a VERY nice combo. Using it on all my servers.
So long as you stay away from cyrus....don't want to deal with corrupt indexes.
Proprietary format. That is enough to drive me away.
I do postfix + qmail + vpopmail + courier-imap + clamav + spamassassin + squirrelmail :)
EXIM + courier-imap for base.
For virtual domains, sometimes I'll use the internal EXIM support or, for more complex setups, MySQL.
I don't usually have an AV running on my e-mail servers. When I do, I like Frisk's F-Prot. Spamassassin is a must, if course.
For WebMail, I still use IMP most of the time, even tho it lacks easy multidomain support. Never stoped me from having, tho :)
[]s
- -- Rodrigo Barbosa rodrigob@suespammers.org "Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur" "Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)
For virtual domains, sometimes I'll use the internal EXIM support or, for more complex setups, MySQL.
:D. the vpopmail backend is hosted on mysql.
I don't usually have an AV running on my e-mail servers. When I do, I like Frisk's F-Prot. Spamassassin is a must, if course.
I'd prefer Command Central if it was a paying solution.
For WebMail, I still use IMP most of the time, even tho it lacks easy multidomain support. Never stoped me from having, tho :)
:)
Don't know if qmailtoaster already has been mentioned. It's really easy to setup and I'm really happy with my setup.
This link describes how to install Qmailtoaster with CentOS4: "CentOS 4 & qmailtoaster the easy way." http://www.qmailtoaster.com/info/EZ-QmailToaster-Install.txt
Feizhou sagde:
For virtual domains, sometimes I'll use the internal EXIM support or, for more complex setups, MySQL.
:D. the vpopmail backend is hosted on mysql.
I don't usually have an AV running on my e-mail servers. When I do, I like Frisk's F-Prot. Spamassassin is a must, if course.
I'd prefer Command Central if it was a paying solution.
For WebMail, I still use IMP most of the time, even tho it lacks easy multidomain support. Never stoped me from having, tho :)
:) _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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Ulrik S. Kofod wrote:
Don't know if qmailtoaster already has been mentioned. It's really easy to setup and I'm really happy with my setup.
This link describes how to install Qmailtoaster with CentOS4: "CentOS 4 & qmailtoaster the easy way." http://www.qmailtoaster.com/info/EZ-QmailToaster-Install.txt
Nope, it has not been. qmailrocks was and another one I think.
My setup is not the qmailtoaster. I have a postfix in my mix.
-
Aleksandar Milivojevic -
Chris Mauritz -
Chris Weisiger -
Craig White -
Feizhou -
Jimmy Bradley -
Jon McCauley -
Les Mikesell -
Rodrigo Barbosa -
Steve Huff -
Sudev Barar -
Ulrik S. Kofod