I'm pretty experienced with Linux. I generally don't have many problems but setting up a mail server has been a pain to me. I don't understand it. I look online and all tutorials I see have to go into setting up advanced mail servers. Most of them recommend installing 15 or so different apps including Postfix, Courier, Cyrus, etc. First off what exactly is the difference between Courier and Postfix? Why would you need both? A lot of tutorials also go into creating tables in MySQL to set these up. Why wouldn't there be a database I can just import? When I set up a mail server does it only work with users on the local machine? If I'm on a subnet, without a domain, how can I connect to get mail with an e-mail client? Can someone please help me!

I have used this toaster site for some time now. Yeah, it makes you install a lot of stuff, but the benefits are that you will have a fully-functional system that you can then play/tweak/learn ...

Deion "Mule" Christopher

Good Day

go to www.hughesjr.com, it shows you how to install a mailserver with spamassin and clamav, very easy and well thought out tutorial.

( You will need an enterpise linux system, like CentOS)

Cheers

Setting up an Email server can get very difficult for a newby. The reason why is because you have thousands of combinations under UNIX/Linux. Also every program does just one thing and drops it off to another program which then picks up the message and does another thing.

Linux servers are made up of tiny little fast programs running in the background all specializing in doing one single thing - but that is the beauty of Linux and that is why it is so fast, secure and efficient, opposed to the bloated spaghetti code in Microsoft Exchange; no wonder it has such a history of bad crashes.

The Email message must traverse many programs before it can be read. It goes like this:

dns finds the mail exchange server (bind)
smtp MTA receives message relay securily (postfix, sendmail, exim)
message is checked for spam and reinjected (spamassassin, clamav)
mail filtering program checks for filters (procmail, sieve)
lmtp MDA puts it in the mailbox (dovecot, courier-imap, cyrus-imap)
client MUA authenticates (cyrus-sasl, MySQL, plain-text)
client MUA reads message (dovecot, courier-imap, cyrus-imap)

You have to know many things very well: DNS, SQL, SMTP, mail filtering, authentication using security, SPAM, and much more. Not only that but afterward you will have to administer the end users.

It took me a couple of years to understand all of this well and I'm still learning. Keep at it.