Hey guys, I'm a Linux with a little favor to ask...

I need to know how I can setup my spare linux box to act like it's own mail server (the machine will act for one account to send/recieve mail so I can do stuff like send messages from "godofheaven@theboss.com" and stuff like that). I just need to know how I could go along doing that, thanks a lot.

Hey Vortex,
Its not difficult but it takes time and it takes alot of reading so if you are ready for that i would go to redhat.com and search for DNS and BIND. It has a very good how-to I think. On this forum search for my member name and you'll find some stuff about it. Nabil put up some stuff from his server (STTH) and i think its very helpful. Nabil if you read this i could not finish my homework yet, but i am working on it. I dont know how but i did something to redhat and i have to uninstall it. Anyways, both of these are useful . Good luck

The other question is, do you already have the domain from which you wish to send this mail registered AND do you have a static IP for the box which you intend to use as the mail server?

Without these items in place, you are in for a bumpy ride.

You can get away without a static IP address by registering with http://www.dyndns.org and getting them to make your MX record follow you around when your IP address changes. That how my mail server is gonna be cooking...

HTH

Jamie...

PS Search for the forum for mention of 'sendmail' you'll get lots to read then

My ISDN Box has a static IP, thanks for that link now I can get a DNS Alias also - that really helps. As for setting up the pop3/smtp (smtp works as itself), that might take longer

Jamie,

Why even bother with this setup you will have going...Do you really expect it to work all time or when ever you need it to ???


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I say if you don't have a static IP then doing own mail server is just a waist of time.

WHO is this JAMIE? OF COURSE you don't run servers with a dynamic IP that's just not right! I don't see any posts from this JAMIE though I must be confused...

to get POP going, Download and install Qpopper 4.3,..It is free and super fast....That's what I have on my server....

It partially for the play about factor but yeah, it's working fine. If my IP address actually change with any reasonable frequency then it could be a problem but it doesn't and even when it does the server check and registers iteself with DynDNS's DNS server so the MX record follows it around.

Beats downloading mail from a remote server all the time. If it all goes very wrong (which I really don't think it will) I'll revert to another address.

Cheers

Jamie...

Me! Hence why all my posts are signed with the name Jamie...

And yeah, I'd agree that having a non-static IP address on a mail server is a little unusual, but as the remote mail server will do an MX lookup and my records at DynDNS follow the server around when its IP addess changes (its only happened once in about 6 months) then it shouldn't be a problem. All my mail now gets sent directly to my room No more waiting for downloads. It should be noted that this is only a server for me - I'm not trying to run a small business or anything like this! (although with a maximum outage of 4 hours for the MX record to expire from any caches its better than a lot of small buisiness I've dealt with!).

So hey... whats wrong with the dynamic address again?? Feel free to mail me the response too

Cheers all - bed time for me - its 01:48 here in the UK... late night computing...

Jamie...

Now that's exactly what I want to do!