SEO

Hi, I am not a Linux person but I am now setting up my first server.

The main reason I am doing this is to run a mail server. Can anybody point
me to a URL/book that will help a novice setup and maintain one?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Greg Smith wrote:
> Hi, I am not a Linux person but I am now setting up my first server.
>
> The main reason I am doing this is to run a mail server. Can anybody
> point me to a URL/book that will help a novice setup and maintain one?

I'd recommend using Postfix, and picking up the O'Reilly book on it.

>> Hi, I am not a Linux person but I am now setting up my first server.
>>
>> The main reason I am doing this is to run a mail server. Can anybody
>> point me to a URL/book that will help a novice setup and maintain one?
>
> I'd recommend using Postfix, and picking up the O'Reilly book on it.

Thanks for your response.

My primary usage is for relay mail. Does Postfix handle that well?

Greg Smith wrote:
>>> Hi, I am not a Linux person but I am now setting up my first server.
>>>
>>> The main reason I am doing this is to run a mail server. Can anybody
>>> point me to a URL/book that will help a novice setup and maintain one?
>> I'd recommend using Postfix, and picking up the O'Reilly book on it.
>
> Thanks for your response.
>
> My primary usage is for relay mail. Does Postfix handle that well?
>
>
If all you need is a relay, sendmail can be fairly simple. IIRC the
O'Reilly sendmail book has such a config file in it.


In the past, I have scrapped any default sendmail config files and
written a minimalist one from scratch, for relays.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> Greg Smith wrote:
>>>> Hi, I am not a Linux person but I am now setting up my first
>>>> server. The main reason I am doing this is to run a mail server. Can
>>>> anybody point me to a URL/book that will help a novice setup and
>>>> maintain one?
>>> I'd recommend using Postfix, and picking up the O'Reilly book on it.
>>
>> Thanks for your response.
>>
>> My primary usage is for relay mail. Does Postfix handle that well?
>>
>>
> If all you need is a relay, sendmail can be fairly simple. IIRC the
> O'Reilly sendmail book has such a config file in it.
>
>
> In the past, I have scrapped any default sendmail config files and
> written a minimalist one from scratch, for relays.

Sendmail config formats are viciously complex. Since the m4 macros were
created to have a "sendmail.mc" file get parsed into the actual working
sendmail.cf and sendmail.fc for frozen configurations, it's gotten much
easier to edit a sendmail.mc to do what you want in legible fashion. The
O'Reilly book is fabulous if you need to do anything complex or slightly
non-standard, but I find Postfix much more managable with its currently very
good integration of procmail, milters, integration for Mailman and
Spamassassin, easy Maildir support, etc., etc., etc.

The sendmail published with many UNIX distributions is so old and out of
date that it's simply not worth using on a server, and I've often found it
easier to get my managers or clients to do a complete shift to Postfix
rather than permit an update to a non-distribution of sendmail to gain the
desired performance or features. Don't get me started on doing this for
Suns, it's off-topic here, but I suspect the same problem has occurred for
Debian users with "stable" rather than "testing" versions of sendmail.

Greg Smith wrote:

> Hi, I am not a Linux person but I am now setting up my first server.
>
> The main reason I am doing this is to run a mail server. Can anybody
> point me to a URL/book that will help a novice setup and maintain one?
>
> Any help is greatly appreciated.

For a first Email server, I would suggest postfix over sendmail.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PostFix_Howto
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/postfix/index.html

If you're all hot on learing sendmail:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sendmail3/index.html

Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> Greg Smith wrote:
>>>>> Hi, I am not a Linux person but I am now setting up my first
>>>>> server. The main reason I am doing this is to run a mail server. Can
>>>>> anybody point me to a URL/book that will help a novice setup and
>>>>> maintain one?
>>>> I'd recommend using Postfix, and picking up the O'Reilly book on it.
>>> Thanks for your response.
>>>
>>> My primary usage is for relay mail. Does Postfix handle that well?
>>>
>>>
>> If all you need is a relay, sendmail can be fairly simple. IIRC the
>> O'Reilly sendmail book has such a config file in it.
>>
>>
>> In the past, I have scrapped any default sendmail config files and
>> written a minimalist one from scratch, for relays.
>
> Sendmail config formats are viciously complex. Since the m4 macros were
> created to have a "sendmail.mc" file get parsed into the actual working
> sendmail.cf and sendmail.fc for frozen configurations, it's gotten much
> easier to edit a sendmail.mc to do what you want in legible fashion. The
> O'Reilly book is fabulous if you need to do anything complex or slightly
> non-standard, but I find Postfix much more managable with its currently very
> good integration of procmail, milters, integration for Mailman and
> Spamassassin, easy Maildir support, etc., etc., etc.
>
> The sendmail published with many UNIX distributions is so old and out of
> date that it's simply not worth using on a server, and I've often found it
> easier to get my managers or clients to do a complete shift to Postfix
> rather than permit an update to a non-distribution of sendmail to gain the
> desired performance or features. Don't get me started on doing this for
> Suns, it's off-topic here, but I suspect the same problem has occurred for
> Debian users with "stable" rather than "testing" versions of sendmail.
>
>
Ah well, you are talking to someone who write his own version of
sendmail.cf in order to use an entirely table driven sendmail.

Its no worse than any other arcane programming language. Its certainly
easier than getting my VCR to record what I want when I want :-)

so let me get this straight. Is sendmail like a pop3 and smtp server?

Are user accounts set up with a shell?

The reason I ask is because I want to put this Sparcstation to use. The
email servers and clients are installed as a matter of course. I just want
to be sure it looks outwardly like a pop and smtp server.

Greg Smith wrote:
> Hi, I am not a Linux person but I am now setting up my first server.
> The main reason I am doing this is to run a mail server. Can anybody
point
> me to a URL/book that will help a novice setup and maintain one?
> Any help is greatly appreciated.

--
Regards,
Peter.
http://www.pelicom.net.nz

Peter Lowrie wrote:
> so let me get this straight. Is sendmail like a pop3 and smtp server?
>
> Are user accounts set up with a shell?
>
> The reason I ask is because I want to put this Sparcstation to use. The
> email servers and clients are installed as a matter of course. I just want
> to be sure it looks outwardly like a pop and smtp server.
>

No.

Sendmail is a Mail Transfer Agent or MTA.

It accepts incoming SMTP connections, or direct injection from other
programs, and processes mail to deliver it to 'delivery agents' based
on a hugely flexible rule based configurator, and it rewrites the mail
headers on the way according to another set of rules.
It may also reject mail in various ways.

ONE of the available delivery agents is the UNIX 'mail' program which
will deliver the mail to a file inbox - usually
/var/spool/mail/<user>...where it may be read directly using several
different Unix MUA's (mail USER agents) or accessed via 'popd' if this
is set up to run, which in turn will serve incoming pop mail connections.

In order top set up a SPARC as a pop mail server, and an SMTP relay, you
need:-

A working internet connecting and routing
Working DNS name resolution.
sendmail running with the -bd switch to go into background server mode
A correctly written sendmail.cf file. Set up to route local mail to the
local delivery agent, and remote mail to the internet via SMTP
User accounts for every user on the mail system. With passwords
popd running.

The O'reilly book 'sendmail' has everything you need and more, and was,
when I last did this, the definitive manual.

Oh, and with sendmail, there are always at least 50 different ways of
achieving the desired results, and 100 different people telling you
their particular one is the one and only pure godlike way to set it up.

Relax, just hack the bastard till it works. 99.999% of sendmail will
never ever be needed, you can thank your lucky stars that no one now
uses UUCP bang style path addressing..and you haven't got a bunch of
know all academics who insist on attempting to use every address form
known to man to prove that your configuration is not as perfect as their
egos.*


Popd? - just read the man pages.

*yes, I have been involved with UKNET in the past ;-)

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> Peter Lowrie wrote:
>> so let me get this straight. Is sendmail like a pop3 and smtp server?
>>
>> Are user accounts set up with a shell?
>>
>> The reason I ask is because I want to put this Sparcstation to use.
>> The email servers and clients are installed as a matter of course. I
>> just want to be sure it looks outwardly like a pop and smtp server.
>>
>
> No.
>
> Sendmail is a Mail Transfer Agent or MTA.
>
> It accepts incoming SMTP connections, or direct injection from other
> programs, and processes mail to deliver it to 'delivery agents' based
> on a hugely flexible rule based configurator, and it rewrites the mail
> headers on the way according to another set of rules.
> It may also reject mail in various ways.
>
> ONE of the available delivery agents is the UNIX 'mail' program which
> will deliver the mail to a file inbox - usually
> /var/spool/mail/<user>...where it may be read directly using several
> different Unix MUA's (mail USER agents) or accessed via 'popd' if this
> is set up to run, which in turn will serve incoming pop mail
> connections.

Excuse me, but the MTA does that. "mail" can read and edit that file to
delete or save individual messages: but it usually transfers saved files to
$HOMEDIR/mbox when it exits.

"mail" is an MUA, not an MTA.

> In order top set up a SPARC as a pop mail server, and an SMTP relay,
> you need:-
>
> A working internet connecting and routing

Only for external mail access, particularly for incoming mail. For
internal-only or for outgoing mail only, you can actually live with no
incoming connections.

> Working DNS name resolution

No, you can use
..
> sendmail running with the -bd switch to go into background server mode
> A correctly written sendmail.cf file. Set up to route local mail to
> the local delivery agent, and remote mail to the internet via SMTP
> User accounts for every user on the mail system. With passwords
> popd running.

No, you don't need user accounts for everyone: There are multiple ways to
have shared or even database managed user accounts that don't require local
logins and only support IMAP/POP3 access, or aliases that can transfer the
email elsewhere.

> The O'reilly book 'sendmail' has everything you need and more, and
> was, when I last did this, the definitive manual.

Agreed. I find sendmail fairly painful to configure for anything even
remotely interesting, and Postfix vastly easier to configure. Your mileage
may vary, but examples include alias management for mailman services and
running virtual servers with spam filtering, especially milters.

> Oh, and with sendmail, there are always at least 50 different ways of
> achieving the desired results, and 100 different people telling you
> their particular one is the one and only pure godlike way to set it
> up.
> Relax, just hack the bastard till it works. 99.999% of sendmail will
> never ever be needed, you can thank your lucky stars that no one now
> uses UUCP bang style path addressing..and you haven't got a bunch of
> know all academics who insist on attempting to use every address form
> known to man to prove that your configuration is not as perfect as
> their egos.*

Oh, agreed. Been there, done that, had to deal with the mortals who refused
to give NFS mounting things for Emacs RMAIL.

> Popd? - just read the man pages.

Then throw it the hell out. Proceed directly to IMAP services, preferably
with the dovecot server, and proceed to using Maildir format instead of mbox
for performance and backup reliability reasons.