Linux email server for a new boy!

malef!c

malef!c

malef!c

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27 Jun 2006
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Evening all.

I am trying to figure out hosting on a VPS with no control panel just to give me a challenge.

The hosting side of things is not a problem, got that working quite quickly but trying to set an email server up is making me lose ita bit!

I have used guides I found on Google but to be honest you need a degree in geek to understand whats going on!

So does anyone have a guide they could point me to that is sort of numpty proof (I know a little so not from scratch :)) or even spare some time to explain it to me.

Hope someone can help me before I turn to the dark side ;) and get a Windows VPS and slap Mail Enable on it :(

Cheers all
M.
 
malef!c said:
Evening all.

I am trying to figure out hosting on a VPS with no control panel just to give me a challenge.

The hosting side of things is not a problem, got that working quite quickly but trying to set an email server up is making me lose ita bit!

I have used guides I found on Google but to be honest you need a degree in geek to understand whats going on!
Click to expand...

There's a very good reason for that- to set up and administer a mail server properly you DO pretty much need a degree in geek :p It's a bit like asking for a "noobs guide" to cloning and gene-splicing tbh!

So does anyone have a guide they could point me to that is sort of numpty proof (I know a little so not from scratch :)) or even spare some time to explain it to me.

Hope someone can help me before I turn to the dark side ;) and get a Windows VPS and slap Mail Enable on it :(

Cheers all
M.
Click to expand...


The easiest setup is probably a combination of Courier and Postfix with Spamassassin for spam filtering. Google these and you should be able to find some fairly straightforward guides.
 
I use the following main components:

Postfix as the MTA,
Dovecot for IMAP/POP3 - I find this far easier than Courier. It also has a really decent Local Delivery Agent.
amavisd-new to interface with SpamAssassin and ClamAV.
Squirrelmail for webmail.
mysql db for all virtual domains, users, quotas, maildir locations etc

I found it helpful to take bits and pieces from each guide and tailor it to what you need. Its worth noting you need a lot of time and patience if you attempt to set up a linux based mail server. I had to compile everything from source aswell which made it more time consuming!
 
Basic components you'll need will be a Mail Transfer Agent like postfix, sendmail or exim, an authentication server like Courier or Dovecot with a backend like MySQL or LDAP and something to scan messages (I like MailScanner with SpamAssassin and a couple of virus checkers).

As suggested, picking a fairly comprehensive guide and then choosing different packages as required would be a good start. You shouldn't have to compile stuff from source too much, check what distro your VPS is (look at /etc/something-release) and maybe look for a guide based on that specifically - will help with installing packages and so on.
 
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