Setting up a mail server - what are my chances?

cerebus

cerebus

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Well for my job I have a need to send out a lot of emails, and I've been finding that the server restrictions of our ISP are going to be a hindrance in the near future. However I have an old laptop that I'm not going to be needing soon and I was thinking to wipe the hard drive, install Ubuntu, and set it up as a dedicated mail server.

Now I'm not exactly a programmer - to say the least. I'm wondering how difficult this will end up becoming. Am I biting off more than I can chew? Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.
 
cerebus said:
Well for my job I have a need to send out a lot of emails, and I've been finding that the server restrictions of our ISP are going to be a hindrance in the near future. However I have an old laptop that I'm not going to be needing soon and I was thinking to wipe the hard drive, install Ubuntu, and set it up as a dedicated mail server.

Now I'm not exactly a programmer - to say the least. I'm wondering how difficult this will end up becoming. Am I biting off more than I can chew? Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.
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Would be pretty easy although I would use RedHat. You can use an app called WebMin to manage and set it up with SendMail for relaying through it. Basically it's a web frontend to manage the entire server. Make sure you have a static IP or DynDNS with a PTR setup and SPF record.
 
Have a look at SME server for something simple and easy to admin:
http://wiki.contribs.org/Main_Page

Though setting it up as a dedicated mail server. How are you ganna handle that? Are you going to give it a dedicated IP and spool mail to it. Or are you going to have a normal mail server (say hosted at Heztner or international).. and are then going to fetchmail from it?

If you have a permanent IP and can route your mail .. and have someone to relay the mail for you... then go with the first option.

If you are on ADSL.. I would recommend proper hosting with the local mail server fetching the mail from the hosting server... and keeping all local email in-house on the local server.
 
Well gdiza we have a large database of contacts and we need to send newsletters. Our mail host has an hourly restriction of 500, which means it becomes an incredibly laborious manual job to continually refresh every hour.

thanks w1zard I'll look at those resources. We are currently hosted with Hetzner, but their restrictions are what is making me consider going outside of the box so I'm looking at both options. I don't mind going either route really, whichever is going to work out best in the long term.
 
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Get a decent "root" access server from Linode.com - and then set something like postfix up. There are enough guides out there (google) to suggest the optimum configuration for your needs.
 
If you're only using it to send and not receive email you could simply use IIS SMTP services. It's not too bad. I use it for our weekly mailshot of around 4000 email and it gets rid of them inside 5 minutes.
 
@Cereberus

I would go with the red hat idea & Webmin im using it myself to manage our NFS server.

or if u want to stick to windows u can use MDaemon from ALtn

http://www.altn.com/Products/Free-Windows-Mail-Server/

they have this free 5 user lisence version out now, its really easy and straight forward to setup, basic networking knowledge essential though

Been using Mdaemon for 5years now with multiple domains and on Diginets works like a charm!

Cheers
JP
 
MDaemon is brilliant. We used to use the built in spam assessor for testing our bulk email before we sent it. There is an option to send it through using the forward option and scoring it based on the Spam Assassin Bayesian filter, that coupled with the black list check and you can greatly improve the deliverability of your email.
 
cerebus said:
However I have an old laptop that I'm not going to be needing soon and I was thinking to wipe the hard drive, install Ubuntu, and set it up as a dedicated mail server.

Now I'm not exactly a programmer - to say the least. I'm wondering how difficult this will end up becoming. Am I biting off more than I can chew? Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.
Click to expand...

You don't need to be a programmer. But without a static IP address with proper forward and reverse DNS you're not going to have the greatest successful delivery rate.

JUGGY said:
Would be pretty easy although I would use RedHat. You can use an app called WebMin to manage and set it up with SendMail for relaying through it.
Click to expand...

I would not use Sendmail for large volumes of mail, especially not on a laptop. Get rid of Sendmail, install Postfix. PM me if you need direct help.
 
To summarize - get a static IP, and use a dedicated email server.

All of the posts above are valid, you'll have more admin work when hosting your own email servers as you'll need to patch it to keep vulnerabilities low, and you'll need a proper firewall of course.
 
The_Librarian said:
...you'll have more admin work when hosting your own email servers as you'll need to patch it to keep vulnerabilities low, and you'll need a proper firewall of course.
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If it's just a sending server and you put it behind a firewall, you have no problem.
 
How does your company currently sent out emails? If they currently have a solution can't you piggy back on it?
What kind of line for you have to the ISP? DSL? Most DSL IP's (dynamic) will be blocked somewhere along the route and classified as spam.

- Do you only need to sent out mails? If you need to receive mails then you will need a hardened server. You will also need a decent firewall to stop scans against your machine.

Any linux flavour works well as a mail server - you can use sendmail/postfix - its a breeze to setup. If you want to use it to receive mails you can also setup milters so that mail is scanned for viruses/spam.

I've setup a few linux servers as smtp servers - its not too difficult. They can really handle the load as well and you don't need too much hardware either. One of them processes 2 millions mails a month at over 300GB :D

Also look at using a dedicated server (for lowish volumes a desktop should be fine) to install linux on - I wouldn't use a laptop.
 
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koffiejunkie said:
You don't need to be a programmer. But without a static IP address with proper forward and reverse DNS you're not going to have the greatest successful delivery rate.



I would not use Sendmail for large volumes of mail, especially not on a laptop. Get rid of Sendmail, install Postfix. PM me if you need direct help.
Click to expand...

Used IIS SMTP for it's pickup folder for sending email. 3 server forwarded to 1 sendmail box with 2 GB ram and a PIV processor.

It ran like a dream, it was hosted on a decent backbone though so it could send email out pretty quickly. Pushed around 4 million through it every month:eek:
 
JUGGY said:
Used IIS SMTP for it's pickup folder for sending email. 3 server forwarded to 1 sendmail box with 2 GB ram and a PIV processor.

It ran like a dream, it was hosted on a decent backbone though so it could send email out pretty quickly. Pushed around 4 million through it every month:eek:
Click to expand...

4mil a month is comparatively low. I've worked on boxes that do six figures per hour. I don't mind sendmail at all, it's just very resource intensive. For one thing, it dumps all its queue files in one directory. When you get a lot of mail in the queue, thanks to Red Hat's brain-dead decision to only support ext3, accessing this gets slower and slower, which in turn drives up load on slows down your machine.

qmail at least has some subdirectories in the queue, but it doesn't index them in any way. If something happens that leaves you stuck with loads of mail in your queue, it becomes a real dog.
 
koffiejunkie said:
4mil a month is comparatively low. I've worked on boxes that do six figures per hour. I don't mind sendmail at all, it's just very resource intensive. For one thing, it dumps all its queue files in one directory. When you get a lot of mail in the queue, thanks to Red Hat's brain-dead decision to only support ext3, accessing this gets slower and slower, which in turn drives up load on slows down your machine.

qmail at least has some subdirectories in the queue, but it doesn't index them in any way. If something happens that leaves you stuck with loads of mail in your queue, it becomes a real dog.
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Judging by your post you're way more experienced in Linux systems than I am so I will concede that you are right;)
 
JUGGY said:
Judging by your post you're way more experienced in Linux systems than I am so I will concede that you are right;)
Click to expand...

Well, experience is hard to quantify. I work for a hosting company with around 100,000 servers, so I've seen my share of high volume machines. Postfix wins hands down, every time.
 
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