Looking for Info. on Linux Mail Server

hello guys,

i have an afterschool job for school credit with a small telecomm/networking firm. they are pro microsoft or windows based for just about every thing.

they also do alot of charity work for churches and other non-profit organizations. awhile back they had a couple of churches that had no firewall for their network. the church couldn't afford buying any software based firewalls.

my companies alternative was to send us high school students and load avg or some other freeware.

my alternative was a smoothwall, thanks to this forum and all the helpful posts, i got it to work. they were amazed at the linux based firewall with all its utilities and easy to configure options.

now they have a project for me, they would like to host an email server for some of their charity projects. i read diggingforgolds sticky on setting up and apache server, in his tutorial he listed "mecury mail transport".

listed as the os requirements are all microsoft os's. they church doesn't have the money to purchase a license, they have an old box but there's no os on it.

i was hoping to run a linux freeware distro for the os and a linux freeware mail server.

your suggestions are greatly appreciated


donor box system spec's -

350mgz pII
64mb of ram
3com network card
generic agp video card
standard mid tower
generic cdrw

hard drive space will most likely be 2 - 40gb pata drives. at the moment there's 2 churches that are looking to be setup.

1st church - 10 email accounts
2nd church - 5 email accounts

i don't know how much hard drive space is needed? if more is needed i have an 80gb pata hdd i can donate and substitute it for one of the 40's.

thanks guys,

send mail
http://www.sendmail.org/

list of distros for linux based mail servers
http://www.emailman.com/unix/servers.html

xmailserver
http://www.xmailserver.org/

mail manager
http://www.linuxmailmanager.com/

guys, i searched and searched on the web and this is what i found, any body have any experience with them?

thanks again,

here's one called merak/icewarp - http://www.icewarp.com/products/merak_email_server_software_linux/?PHPSESSID=0b900b0731ae443

i'm reading info right now but its all foreign to me. the only successful linux install's i've ever done are smoothwalls and a livecd install of ubuntu 5.10.

i've had problems getting pclinuxos on my laptop recently but i'm positive this is do to hardware compatibility.

OpenXchange

Hi, any distro will do for for an e server ( I prefer Suse ), however if you require webmail and groupware i would strongly suggest OpenXchange

http://mirror.open-xchange.org/ox/EN/community This is the free version of the software for which I use in comercial workplace both free and paid.

Please check out the online working demo, as thats is what you get no strings...

Oh quick edit for OpenXchange, you will need a Linux distro, many will do, check the online documentation for install instructions and which will be suitable.

enjoy the FREE world......

thanks mekon, i'm going start d/l'ing this iso and get to work. i'll check it the demo too.

if possible please keep an eye on this thread , i'm sure i'll have lots of questions.

I highly recommend Qmail.. bit of a learning curve (not nearly as bad as sendmail), but it's a very powerful server with a fairly easy configuration. Qmail includes a POP3/IMAP server, but I use courier-imap.

http://cr.yp.to/qmail.html
http://lifewithqmail.com
http://qmailrocks.com

Basic qmail is pretty basic... you'll want a few add-ons for spam filtering and good recipient checking and such. If you are running multiple domains, look into Vpopmail. You can get pre-built virtual domain hosting ready packages called "vpopmail toasters".

Of course, you can get email hosting anywhere for pretty cheap nowadays.

thanks alot su root

i have lots of reading and work to do. the reason my afterschool job wants to host it is because its a write off for them.

all of us students that (r.o.p) there do it for high school credit that may be applicable towards college units. they don't charge for the work we do but the do write it off their taxes. its the work we for spyware removal, connection problems, general pc problems. i built and configured smoothwalls for each of these churches.

they keep saying "tax shelter" ??? its a fun project because i hope to host my own email server. i'll use it for my family and maybe some friends.

i'm positive it will be multiple domains because they'll want to keep the churches on their own.

do you know of the system requirements needed for say 2 domains?

1rst domain - 10 email accounts
2nd domain - 5 accounts

truthfully their wont be much reduncy or backup done for these domains and the churches have been informed of it.

it still hasn't been decided if these will be hosted onsite or hosted at my jobs place. i'm thinking they'll host it at my job for a bigger write off?

The number of email accounts really doesn't matter. What matters is how much mail will be flowing through there. For 15 accounts, pretty much anything will do, unless they are all powerusers. The P2 should be good enough for it, even if you get hit with a big spam attack. 40 gigs should be enough. If the users use POP3, then it'll be no problem at all, if they use IMAP (where the messages stay on the server), you'll have to watch that they're not substituting your mail server for a file server (ie: sending 50mb files to eachother), but you should be good. Right now my personal email uses about 209MB for 5,650 messages (about 3 years worth)... my work email is about 2-3 times that because I get more email at work, and have a lot more attachments.

If you do use Qmail, find and download "qmqtool", it's a perl script flying around the net.... it allows you to easily view the queues and queue statisitcs, expire and delete messages based on a pattern, which can come in really handy.

This site helped me out a bit.
http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/

wow guys thank you, not even 24 hours have passed by and i already have the info. needed for the project proposal.

i'm going to see what linux distro is the most stable to run, so far like mekon suggested most people seem to be running suse the most and redhatlinux a close second.

problem is the most stable linux distro that i myself have ran(livecd) has been ubuntu 5.10.

i'm going to search and see if others have had success with ubuntu, i'm going to start d/l'ing suse and redhat over the weekend.

Most stable is Debian stable I'd say (Ubuntu is based on debian btw). Whatever distro you install, do NOT install any form of XWindows: if the distro needs it by default, stay away. You don't have enough RAM for that.

For the MTA I'd suggest exim4 or postfix. Stay FAR away from sendmail. For the mail storage use courier-imap and/or courier-pop3. If you want spamfiltering on the server probably dspam. SpamAssassin will kill that donor box.
You will need exactly as much harddisk space as your users use. There is no hard rule since your users define the requirements. If you have all day powerpoint-mailing junkies, it will be high of course...

Beginner said:

i'm going to see what linux distro is the most stable to run, so far like mekon suggested most people seem to be running suse the most and redhatlinux a close second.

Click to expand...

If you choose opensuse, postfix is configurable right through YaST, so all you need to do is set up a POP or IMAP server. If you plan on using postfix, I recommend UW_IMAP (it's better for mbox mailboxes, which postfix uses by default). There may be a POP/IMAP server already on the opensuse CDs (if so, use that one).

I'd recommend installing 10.0 (or if you wait a few weeks, 10.1), as releases get security patches for 2 years, but release candidates only get patches until the release is put out.

Couple things to keep in mind:
A) Do you have a static IP? If not, see if they're willing to get one. If your IP changes you'll need to manually change the DNS entry, and mail will be delayed until DNS propagates, which can be anything from a few minutes to several days depending on your DNS configuration.
B) Does your ISP block outgoing port 25? Lots of ISPs do this to stop their users from getting infected and sending spam. If this is the case, then all of your mail server's outgoing mail will have to be sent to your ISP's mail servers instead of being relayed directly out onto the internet... this can be a tricky configuration.
C) Does your ISP allow you to run services (like SMTP, POP3, IMAP), if not, your ISP could shut you down without notice at any time. It's generally accepted that remote mail servers will try to send mail for upto 7 days if they can't contact your server, before bouncing it... so you have a deadline of about 7 days to get it back online, or a substitute in place before mail starts bouncing... this isn't 100% of mail servers... things like mailing lists will bounce fairly quickly to keep their queues clear.