I was thinking it'd be cool if I set up an e-mail server so that like I can create as many e-mail addresses (POP3?) that I want or w/e. I already have my website and stuff and I figured it'd be cool just to be able to maek e-mail address for stuff

What ports do I need to open?
What software do I need to do this?
What is a good link that I can use to do figure this out?

E-mail Common Ports:

25 - SMTP Port (needed to send/receive mail)
110 - POP3
143 - IMAP2
465 - SMTP SSL
993 - IMAP SSL
995 - POP3 SSL

You'll need and MTA (Qmail, Postfix, Sendmail, ect.) and some kind of pop/imap server (Courier and Cyrus, ect.).

The biggest thing you need to make sure you do is NOT run an open relay. An open relay is an SMTP server that will let anyone send mail to anywhere through it. It is logical to have an SMTP connection except a connection from anyone (how else would anyone be able to send you mail) but only trusted machines should be able to ask the SMTP server to send mail to another SMTP server.

I do suggest you to configure qmail because it is fast reliable and easy to configure lot of howtos aviable online.

start with www.qmailrocks.org , there you will probably find tutorial for your distro.

I configured sendmail after a few attempts got it working pretty good. I bought the O'Reilly sendmail 600 page book. It was like reading assembler for me.

I didn't want to be an open relay, but I wanted to check email remotely. So, I used webmin to configure sendmail and then I use SSH port forwarding to make an ssh tunnel to check my email. It works good and I don't have to worry about spammers.

yup i use sendmail and it works fine. thats all i care about! when it breaks i might try something else but if i can send and receive an email i dont care!

I think I'm'a try sendmail what packages I need? Just sendmail or what?

do I need DNS set up?

You will need a DNS pointing to your mail server. I don't use my own DNS, I use the DNS from the folks I got my domian through. I have the servers in my basement and run sendmail right from here.

What distro do you have? I know redhat, SuSe already have sendmail on them, it just needs configured. You will need to open port 25. Make sure you're not an open relay. You can test it with various testing tools. One of my favorite is SAM SPADE. Do a search on Google for it.

Being able to check e-mail remotely doesn't make you a remote hole at all. You can use all the insecure IMAP and POP you want all day long and nobody else could care less.

It is when you allow uses to connect remotely to your SMTP server and send mail to places other then address on your local machine that you are opperating a open relay. IMAP SSL or POP SSL would be a much more elegant solution (one that would work with regular old e-mail clients) then an SSH tunnel for checking mail.

ok i'm not 100% on all of this but what i have setup is going to a place called http://www.dyndns.org and getting a FREE name linked to my IP address so now if you use amon.is-a-geek.net (there is nothing interesting there so don't look im in the process of building stuff up) it connects you to the small computer in my room running 24/7. this allows for SMTP, POP3, HTTP (apache), ftp etc... all to run off a computer with a free name. the email side means that running both the POP3 & SMTP i can have anything i want @amon.is-a-geek.net which is fantastic for if you have to sign up for something you don't want to have spamed
as far as ports goes you only need to know 2 for a basic setup:
25 SMPT
110 POP3

if your interested look up telnet pop3 or telnet smtp on google as you can telnet into thease servers to send email.

on a securety note it is easy to make your server only allow relay from people who log in with a particular name. some servers will allow you to say only relay from certan IP ranges so if you have a lan you can set it to relay from 192.168.X.X and nothing else

so did you set up your e-mail? if you did what site/software did you use to help you set it up

btw I do use dyndns check my site out

I am currently trying to set up a mail server using sendmail see my thread here...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ht=mail+server

any assistance would also be appreciated.

I downloaded, installed hMailserver from hmailserver.com. It was up and running in minutes. Download the latest (3.0) package with MySQL included and follow simple instructions.

it says it's for Microsoft Windows...lol

hmailserver is linux based