Lightweight Mail Server

arachnoid · 29 Aug 2007 at 15:14

Hi guys,

It's been a while since my last post but I've just installed Debian on an NSLU2 and i'm looking for some advice about setting up a mail server on this little baby.

I'm hoping to get Squirrel Mail setup at some point so i'd like to have IMAP and POP3 available aswell as SMTP while using as little RAM as possible.

Has anyone else had a play with one of these slugs?

Ta

Russell

refresh · 29 Aug 2007 at 16:38

I have never played with a mail server but you did mention as little RAM as possible and Debian in the same sentence. Excuse me for promoting my favourite distro once again but take a look at Slackware or Zenwalk Server Edition.

arachnoid · 29 Aug 2007 at 20:12

the problem i have here is that the NSLU2 is a NAS device that has a debian installer provided by the OSS community.

http://www.cyrius.com/debian/nslu2/
has some info about the install and a picture of the device.

Unfortunately I have no idea how i would go about installing slackware on the little thing

refresh · 29 Aug 2007 at 20:42

Ahhh, I should have done my homework first. Remember the obvious rules, if you don't need it, bin it and recompile the kernel (from a desktop) with the smallest amount of pre-loaded modules possible.

arachnoid · 30 Aug 2007 at 09:00

I've already recompiled to leave out initramfs and that seemed to produce a performance boost. I haven't had so much entertainment since I built LFS on my desktop a few years ago.

I'm seriously considering getting the soldering iron out and adding some ram to the thing. I found some suitable PC100 ram sticks in my parts drawer last night so the only remaining component I require is a bit of courage(and maybe a CC for a replacement if it all goes wrong).

Anyone else got some mail server suggestions?

Thanks

Russell

!bluetonic! · 6 Sep 2007 at 10:13

I've got a NSLU2 'Slug' and I love it.

Mine runs Samba and I host my own website (using lighttpd) on it too.

I haven't upgraded anything on it and it's not overclocked.

As for the mail, I did try and install a mail server (postfix) on it, but gave up. I use Google Mail and didn't really see the need. The mail server was needed because I was going to install a lightweight forum as well as part of my website and needed mail access to send user names and messages out, but again realized, I would probably be the only user.

http://slug.archives.nks.net/List/slug.archive.0707/0074.html
will take you to some further readings.

Let us know how you get on.

arachnoid · 6 Sep 2007 at 15:09

!bluetonic! said:
I've got a NSLU2 'Slug' and I love it.
Mine runs Samba and I host my own website (using lighttpd) on it too.

I've got Samba running so i have an always on source of music at home. I've got mySQL running on it as I'm currently developing a project that uses a mySQL DB. It's also running subversion so I have source control at home.

I'm looking to set one up at a friends house as he likes the look of it and we're thinking of setting up cron jobs to encrypt important data (CVS / Documents etc) and store it on the others Slug as a backup.

Have you considered doing the RAM / Flash upgrades?

v0n · 6 Sep 2007 at 15:36

exim should work quite well on it, NSLU2 is almost the same power spec as original Cobalt Qube, just that Qube is all mips and all that, mine was running exim like a charm with less than 200 bogoMIPS. Forget about spamd on it though.

!bluetonic! · 7 Sep 2007 at 12:23

arachnoid said:
I've got Samba running so i have an always on source of music at home. I've got mySQL running on it as I'm currently developing a project that uses a mySQL DB. It's also running subversion so I have source control at home.

I'm looking to set one up at a friends house as he likes the look of it and we're thinking of setting up cron jobs to encrypt important data (CVS / Documents etc) and store it on the others Slug as a backup.

Have you considered doing the RAM / Flash upgrades?

I haven't considered the upgrades. I've broken far too many bits of hardware in the past that were functioning well in order to upgrade. If I wanted more processing power, mini-itx is the way to go.

The backup idea sounds good. I wouldn't like the reliance on just 1 HDD plugged into the unit. My Slug is on 24/7. Once every 3 weeks the hard drive gets plugged into my Debian RAID machine for backup.