Hi there I am looking at setting up a mail server I have just got adsl with a static ip and I have registerd a domain.

Say my domain is newbie.com what should I call my ubuntu server box? Can I call it ubuntu.newbie.local is that ok.

I want to set up my own dns, web and mail to avoid the expense of a hosting package and was wondering if there is any mail server out there that will let me save all mail recieved and sent on the server. As my dad really needs to keep all sent mail for business use. I have heard of IMAP would this do it?

Thankyou

Hello threegig,

If newbie.com is your domain, then you may use any name, including ubuntu, and then append your domain on the end: ubuntu.newbie.com (instead of ubuntu.newbie.local). If you have good control over the DNS settings for your domain (or if you run your own DNS server) then you may also create extra aliases for the same machine as extra CNAME or A records, such as www, ftp, or mail. Just depends on your preference.

The SMTP server (at least all standard ones do) does store all email received on the server until some other server (like a POP or IMAP server) deletes it. POP servers, by default, do delete message once you download them to your workstation. IMAP, like you suspected/knew is much better for when you want messages to stay on the server even when downloading or 'reading' the message. As for keeping copies of 'sent' mail, you can configure your email client to always save a copy in a 'Sent' folder. If you're using IMAP, this 'Sent' folder can be located on the server in which case you'll also have copies of all sent email.

Good luck and have fun setting it all up.

Thankyou so much. As I will be setting up dns,mail and web server I might go with server.newbie.com

Thanks Again I am sure I will have many sleepless nights getting this all up and running. But thats the joys of learning linux

Thanks