Linux Distro for mail server

madman045

madman045

madman045

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Currently have a client who is looking to change mail server packages

Currently running vpop3 on 2003 server, but the performance isnt great and it hammers the server with antispam turned on

So we are looking for a lightweight linux distro to start with, for just email, AV and antispam / webmail

Whatever we decide in the end, it will need to initially support 100 users

Currently have the following pc to test with

Duron 750mhz
192mb
20GB
CDROM

Can anyone recommend a distro and the associated packages

Ideally with a gui as im a complete linux n00b

Thanks
 
Spam and virus scanning are pretty resource intensive tasks, hope your production server will be a bit more powerful! The test server should be just about OK for running a modern distro with a GUI.

I like CentOS as a server distro, it's just Red Hat Enterprise Linux minus all the Red Hat branding. For the email server packages we use MailScanner with SpamAssassin for spam filtering and Sophos, BitDefender and ClamAV for virus scanning, postfix as the mta and Courier-IMAP (with virtual users/LDAP) for the pop/imap server. Squirrelmail is a fairly simple webmail option, you'll need a webserver like Apache running too.

I wouldn't bother with a GUI, most of the configuration is text file editing so command line is simpler, quicker and less demanding on the hardware. There are plenty of setup guides online for using an assortment of packages to get your mailserver running - I'd just pick a friendly looking one and run through it. If all that's too much you can get pre-built and -configured distributions like ClarkConnect.
 
Thanks Andrew,

I will give Cent OS a go and grab the packages you mentioned.

Three AVs, do they all integrate with it then?

I've used Clam AV before.

I looked at clark connect, but they dont really want to spend anything hence they havent bought exchange server.

I think it will be running more on a high end pc then a server.

Andy
 
madman045 said:
Three AVs, do they all integrate with it then?
Click to expand...

Bit Defender and ClamAV are free ones, and Sophos is used on the desktops so we have access to that for the servers too, integrating them with MailScanner is pretty easy - http://wiki.mailscanner.info/doku.php?id=&idx=documentation:anti_virus - usually a few configuration file tweaks for installation paths etc. is all thats needed :).

We've got upwards of 50 users at some offices with a shuttle-type gateway server (Sempron 3000/1Gb RAM) so a decent PC with a gig or two of RAM should be fine.
 
riddlermarc said:
I used to run qmailtoaster on a CentOS box, works a treat and there are some (relatively) easy install guides on their website.. definitely worth a look.

http://www.qmailtoaster.org/
www.centos.org

CentOS is the free, 100% equivalent version of RHEL :)
Click to expand...

I'd also recommend using something like Qmailtoaster. Unless you are pretty clued up with *nix then you may have a hard time trying to get all the various components of a modern mailserver working together. Qmailtoaster has a load of prebuilt packages all designed to work well together and should cope OK with the load your talking about (Assuming decent hardware of course!).
 
AndrewP said:
I like CentOS as a server distro, it's just Red Hat Enterprise Linux minus all the Red Hat branding. For the email server packages we use MailScanner with SpamAssassin for spam filtering and Sophos, BitDefender and ClamAV for virus scanning, postfix as the mta and Courier-IMAP (with virtual users/LDAP) for the pop/imap server. Squirrelmail is a fairly simple webmail option, you'll need a webserver like Apache running too.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much the set up used to learn about Linux Mail servers. Took a weekend of playing but got it working nicely in the end.
 
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