ijez wrote: > Hi, > > I need to setup a new mail server and before I got my feet wet or losing in the configurations jungle, I really need some advice from the gurus here for what the best software to used for the mailserver base on CentOS 4.x setup. > > The objective is, the mailserver will be easy to setup, maintained and have some > 1. database backend for storing user info ( mysql? ) LDAP, almost everything can work with it out-of-the-box. SQL database support varries, and usually needs additional plugins. If you know exactly what you are doing, SQL might be good way to go regardless. With CentOS you get Postgresql and MySQL. Personally, I am fan of former, although later is more popular. > 2. spam and antivirus filtering For free, MIMEDefang, SpamAssassin, ClamAV. Commercial, I heard that Sophos antispam works fabolously. > 3. webbase user administrations I used custom made stuff. If you use Horde/IMP for webmail (there's also other applications from Horde framework for managing calendars, filters, and so on), Horde has some ability for web based user management too. > 4. Provide smtp,smtps,pop3,pop3s,imap,imaps service Sendmail or postfix (Sendmail has better plugin support for anti-spam/virus scanners, Postfix is easier to configure but is not as configurable as Sendmail). Dovecot or Cyrus (as packaged in CentOS it is really trivial to setup). Cyrus scales well, and is suitable for small and large installations. There's huge difference when opening mailbox with 40,000+ emails (and I've got couple of 'em) in Dovecot and Cyrus. So even if you have two users, Cyrus might be good way to go. If you are going to do webmail too, Squirrelmail (or whatever it is called) is part of CentOS. Horde project has IMP (you'd need to install Horde, than IMP under Horde). Horde project also has bunch of additional applications that integrate with each other for calendaring, todo lists, generating server-side mail filters (supported are procmail for "unix-account-based" mailboxes, and sieve for Cyrus based mailboxes), and much more. Check http://www.horde.org/ for more info. Installing Horde/IMP for the very first time might seem a bit complicated since it requires bunch of additional PHP module, but it might be worth it. Also, check "which imapd" thread from couple of days ago.