Linux for mail server

Mark M

Mark M

Mark M

Soldato
Joined
6 Jan 2006
Posts
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Location
Newcastle upon Tyne
Im a total noob to Linux and someone has suggested using scalix mail server a try.

Firstly is this wise? I have never istalled anything linux at all!!

Secondly, do you know is scalix is extremely difficult to install or should I work it out?

Thirdly, what is the best "linux" to go for a mail server and possilby file server , or does it not matter? I keep reading about distros such as ubuntu. Is this just the GUI part of linux?
 
Can Qmail share calenders etc? Basically Im looking for the functionality of Exchange. Also can it use Outlook as its mail client? The other computers will all be windows based with outlook already installed.
 
I run a Scalix server (in a production environment) on CentOS.

It used to be a pain in the backside to set up, but the newest version is just about as simple as it gets.

Rock-solid stability too, couldn't ask for more.

Make sure your server has plentiful amounts of RAM and of course good disk I/O speeds. I run mine on a dual cpu box with 4Gb of RAM and a 14-disk RAID-10 U320 SCSI array, and I wouldn't want to run it on anything less than that really, but your application might not be so stressful.
 
It will only be for 3, maybe 4 computers, but they dont want to shell out on exchange with it being such a small setup
 
Even the free (community) version of scalix now is easier to install and configure than qmail/sendmail etc. Basically:

Download the (single file) installer, run it.. and it will prompt you for e-mail domain etc etc, pull down any needed redhat/centos packages, and check your system is sane then do the install.
After this it's http://servername/webmail for your clients to login over the web and http://servername/sac to log into the 'scalix web administration console' for adding/controlling user accounts.

The web interface is first class (think exchange).
I run it both personally and deployed it in a production environment in my last job (Still running nicely and untouched I believe). DRZ is right about the box spec's... Just make sure you remember it's a Tomcat J2EE type application, and give it the same resources (memory, I/O) that Tomcat app's like :)
(Ie, run this on 512M ram on an old 1ghz box for 10 users and you will seriously suffer, it's mainly ram and disk access speed requirements) i'd say no less than a gig to start with for your setup, preferably two, as centos itself is pretty hungry :P

Also... take regular backups, as mail servers going down get people very angry very quickly :).. don't they DRZ? ;) *old hw and heat tbh, not drz'z fault </slander_disclaimer>*
 
TrX said:
Also... take regular backups, as mail servers going down get people very angry very quickly :).. don't they DRZ? ;) *old hw and heat tbh, not drz'z fault </slander_disclaimer>*
Click to expand...

Haha, looks like I have a faulty backplane behind the array, I am getting drive failure lights like a disco at the moment. Never the same light twice.

Regular backups will certainly help you, but that has little to do with whatever it is you choose software-wise :p
 
DRZ said:
Regular backups will certainly help you, but that has little to do with whatever it is you choose software-wise :p
Click to expand...

True... True!

..Anyway, let us know what you choose, and how you are finding the setup.
Also, if you need help with DNS MX records and SMTP Port forwards etc, there will always be people here that can help

//TrX
 
Just about to try and get this up and running.

When Im downloading the scalix file which one to I need to go for?

Binary Server Packages
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 / CentOS 4 .bin
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 / CentOS 5 .bin
Fedora 7 .bin
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.0 .bin
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.0 .bin
SUSE Linux Open Source Software (OSS) 10.2 .bin
Debian*

Source Packages
Source .tgz MD5 Checksum

Also is it ok to download this on a windows machine and then transfer to a linux machine via USB pen drive?

Thanks
 
As dave-lew says, the distro you've chosen will dictate which version you're gonna need to download.

There shouldn't be any problem transferring the file from a USB pen... however you might need to look up how to mount the USB pen in case it doesn't do it automagically for you (not used CentOS so I can't say for sure, but I guess it will do).
 
Then download either

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 / CentOS 4 .bin or
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 / CentOS 5 .bin

Depending on the centos version you installed.
 
Oh, I feel really stupid now. Didnt realise that the different OS's were in the filenames!! Not sure how I quite missed that to be honest!!

NicNac - havent had a chance to have a look at it really. Going to spend some time over the weekend having a play around.
 
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