Networking :: Email server for DSL?

I really would like to get an email server to run on DSL. I'm pretty much a newb. Can someone help me?

What do you need it to do? IMAP? POP3? SMTP? Single user? Multiple users, if so, approximately how many? There's several different applications that can do what you need, but some of them may be better suited to your individual needs than others.

Could you give a bit more information about what you want your "mail server" to do?

I'd basically like to get a server that can handle six inboxes (I can compromise on this) recieve mail from servers and let computers on my network have email, the purpose being to be able to look at email on all of my computers instead of having to kick someone off one to check mail. I guess IMAP inside the network would be best so the sent items folders will all be the same. The servers I download mail from are all POP and SMTP. Only one of the mailboxes would have to dosnload from multiple servers. Thank you for your help, I hope that this told you what you need to know.

Quote (arew264 @ April 15 2005,20:25)

Okay. There's a few problems with running a mail server from home. The primary problem is one of network ip, more than likely, you don't have a static ip, and if you do happen to have a static ip, if it's not within an acceptable ip block, your mail server is gonna get banned by several of the larger ISPs (AOL and it's derivatives, wmconnect, etc. and Earthlink, right off the top of my head, to name a few) so you won't be able to send mail to anyone on those networks from your mailserver. I'm telling you this from personal experience, so be prepared for it.

Secondly, the biggest problem with new sysadmins setting up email for the first time is inadvertantly setting up an open relay. I've done it, everybody that's ever set up a mail server has done it at one time or another. If you set up an open relay, spammers will move in, set up residence and use your box for a spamming fiesta. You will get some of the nastiest emails in the world from hardworking sysadmins questioning your parentage and your predilection for bestiality.

Thirdly, there is no third point.

I'm going to assume that all six POP3 accounts belong to you, even if they don't, the first two-thirds of this is still applicable. Use fetchmail and procmail. Fetchmail can get mail from all of your mail accounts and procmail can deliver them to six different accounts in six different mailboxes or to the same account in six different mailboxes or even one account into the same mailbox. Procmail is infintely configurable and it's very handy.

Secondly, set up an IMAP server so that you, or whoever, can log into your "mail server" and sync up their client to retrieve their email. If you have six different accounts, you can have six different people log in and get their mail. Qmail-IMAP is popular for a good reason, it has a very good history of security and it's in widespread use. Alternately, you might be interested in Simple IMAP server which is, as the name indicates, simpler to set up. Both will require you to compile from source on Debian-alike systems due to their licensing schemes. You might luck up and find a precompiled binary on a server somewhere, if you're paranoid you'll want to compile them yourself. Freshmeat has shell scripts to build a full qmail installation based on "Life with qmail", which you should buy, read and absorb fully. If you're not paranoid about a mail server install, you will be soon enough.

Thirdly, you can set up qmail so that you can send email directly, "Life with Qmail" covers how to do this, and the above mentioned shell scripts will automate most of the setup. In your particular instance, I wouldn't do it. Qmail can act as a smarthost by rewriting the From: address and routing the mail through the appropriate ISPs SMTP server. Multiple accounts is a much more tedious, the same process must be repeated for each separate ISP and qmail must be configured to automatically rewrite the From: address and route accordingly. It would be easier to set up the individual clients to send mail directly through your ISPs SMTP host, and use your local "mail server" just to read received mail. Of course, if all six accounts belong to you, you can set up qmail to act as a smarthost and rewrite the From: address to be from one email address. It's a lot simpler and doesn't take as long to set up, but all outgoing mail will be from the same email address.

My personal setup, that I've used for quite awhile at home, fetchmail+procmail+bogofilter+mutt+msmtp. Fetchmail gets mail from three accounts: from my isp, my hosting provider and gmail. Procmail pipes everything through bogofilter, which tags spam and then procmail sorts mail into one of 17 different mailboxes. I use mutt, a CLI app, which I can fire up from a SSH session from anywhere. Msmtp is a simple SMTP client that uses my ISPs SMTP server, so I can send mail from mutt from the same SSH session.

All of my mail is under one account, on one box which I can access from anywhere via SSH to send and receive mail. I'm not saying that this is the direction that you should take, but it is easier than what you propose to do and it can be set up in half an hour.

There are other mail servers that you can use, sendmail is one of the oldest and one of the buggiest. Go search through BugTraq's archives for sendmail and prepare for your mind to be boggled at all of the security holes that has plagued sendmail throughout it's history.

I've heard a lot of good things about courier+postfix. I've never used them and can't vouch for their ease of setup or use.

I've also used Exim, which comes default with every full Debian install but the config has changed drastically with the latest version and I haven't used it in a couple of years, so, you're on your own there.

Qmail is probably the best bet for what you want to do, but I think it's going to be overkill for your particular situation.

If I need to clarify any of this, or I didn't fully answer your question. Please ask again a little differently and I'll see what else I can come up with.

With the whole SMTP thing, I am going to use my isp's smtp for that reason. THanks for all the help, I'll try to get it working.

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