Setting up a mail server - what are my chances?

[Juggy]

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.

Care to let on which company you work for?

I've had dealings with FastHost, EUKHost and Itex in the channel islands.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Care to let on which company you work for?

I prefer not to. I'm here in my personal capacity. I'm happy to help where I can though

 

[Juggy]

I prefer not to. I'm here in my personal capacity. I'm happy to help where I can though

Fair enough, I will then thank you for your transferral of knowledge, it is appreciated.

 

[gregmcc]

I work for a hosting company with around 100,000 servers,

/me bows before the master!

 

[proximiti99]

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.

Mmm, 100k servers? Are u guys local? Thats quite a big operation...

 

[koffiejunkie]

/me bows before the master!

He he. You know, there are guys who work with who would disagree very passionately with my advice here (especially the qmail fans). Which is why I'm not too keen to say where I work

Mmm, 100k servers? Are u guys local? Thats quite a big operation...

Yeah, it's quite staggering. I remember the first time I saw how much bandwidth we have available in one DC. I arrived here just the week before from bandwidth-deprived S.A. Nearly fainted.

 

[RSkeens]

koffiejunkie is correct, Postfix is pretty awesome - You can also try out Dovecot which is also an efficient mailer, although it can create a slightly high load for the first day or so while it tunes itself to the server, but after that, it's smooth sailing

BTW, is it RapidSwitch, koffiejunkie?

 

[cerebus]

Thanks for all of the advice. Right now I'm looking at two main options: either using the mdaemon server which will save me the hassle of installing and learning Red Hat or going the postfix route. Someone advised me not to use a lappie - but that's all I have really, why would you not advise that? The problem is that the computers I use at work are all Macs which have very limited options, so the crappy lappy (as I have lovingly termed it) will have to suffice.

 

[koffiejunkie]

You can also try out Dovecot which is also an efficient mailer, although it can create a slightly high load for the first day or so while it tunes itself to the server

Dovecot is a pop3/imap server, not a "mailer." The load is from building indexes, but this only happens when you use it to replace something else and there are already large mailboxes present.

Thanks for all of the advice. Right now I'm looking at two main options: either using the mdaemon server which will save me the hassle of installing and learning Red Hat or going the postfix route.

You don't have to know much more than logging in and using a text editor to get postfix up and running.

Someone advised me not to use a lappie - but that's all I have really, why would you not advise that? The problem is that the computers I use at work are all Macs which have very limited options, so the crappy lappy (as I have lovingly termed it) will have to suffice.

Laptop hard discs are traditionally slower. That's all. Oh, and by the way, OS X already has postfix built-in. What kinda lappy do you have?

 

[cerebus]

OSX already has postfix? That would save me a ton of time if I could get that up and running instead. Don't suppose you know about how to go about finding that?

 

[koffiejunkie]

The configuration is in /etc/postfix/ but I don't know how the start-up scripts work in OS X. It's not enabled by default.

Anyway, if you have a dedicated machine, it's not a lot of trouble to set that up.

If you're using Red Hat/Fedora/Centos:

1. Install the OS - minimal install, you don't need the GUI.
2. Log in as root, type:

service sendmail stop
chkconfig sendmail off
yum install postfix
chkconfig postfix on
service postfix start

On Debian (maybe Ubuntu too, I don't know what they ship with):

1. Install the OS
2. Log in, and type:

/etc/init.d/exim4 stop
apt-get remove exim4 exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light
apt-get install postfix
/etc/init.d/postfix start

That will give you a working system.

 

[cerebus]

This is awesome - OSX has Postfix. I can just use my work PC as a server. I'll have to try that out tomorrow. Thanks!! If it doesn't work I'll try the laptop and see, either way I have a working solution ahead of me.

 

[rwenzori]

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

Don't forget the highlighted bit. Many servers won't accept mail from IPs that have no reverse lookup. I had to arrange that through IS for my little home mail server.

 

[cerebus]

thanks rwenz.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Don't forget the highlighted bit. Many servers won't accept mail from IPs that have no reverse lookup. I had to arrange that through IS for my little home mail server.

Also remember the reverse DNS has to match an A record pointing to the same IP.

 

[cerebus]

Ok thanks to everyone's help I've made good progress. i think I'm just about ready to move forwards. Next week I should be able to try out my Postfix+Mac solution.