Dear friends,

Wondering if it is possible that I install postfix and qmail in one single machine. Then use the postfix to send mail and the qmail to retrieve mail.

I ask this because part of the qmail isntallation require unintalling the sendmail and postfix, so I was wondering if leaving postfix in a machine already configured with qmail would lead to any kind of interruption.

thanks

Both qmail and postfix are sendmail replacements, ie MTAs (Mail Transport Agents). They're all designed to do the same thing - transport your mails.
I suppose you could install them side by side, but I wouldn't recommend it. Chances are that they will conflict in some way, unless you configure them very neatly.

So, if you're looking for an easy way out, I'd recommend uninstalling postfix first before installing qmail.

Why would you want to keep 2 programs to do the task that 1 program can handle? It would require double configuration effort, double effort to understand both systems if there's ever a problem (and there will be...)

Hi timmeke,

Thanks for your help. I want to do it because my company's setup is like that. We have two mail server, one postfix, one qmail. one for sending, one for receiving in order to do somekind of restriction for local sender and people who can send external mails.

I just want to try configuring the qmail and postfix in the same machine because I only have one computer at home, I want to test the installation. if I have two computer I will do each on different computer, but i only have one computer at home so I have to experiement both in one computer. hehe,

thanks friend!

OK. Just make sure that they're never running at the same time, on your machine at home.
And avoid switching from one to the other too often, as this may require some changes that are not so obvious.
For instance, I know that postfix installation creates some symbolic links that make the names of typical sendmail binaries point to their postfix counterparts. qmail, also a sendmail replacement, may do the same.
Switching between the 2 would then involve recreating the symlinks.

Running them both at same time will probably fail too. Only one program or service can allocate port 25 (SMTP communication port). Binding 2 programs to the same port (if at all possible) will probably read to miscommunications.

Hi timmeke,

thanks alot ! ok sad....then I cannot use my laptop to run postfix and qmail testing simultaneously..haha, coz I have to maintain the postfix and qmail servers set up by my predecessor, but I never set up my own...so quite worried and wanna understand its function as muc as possible. especially worried about the thing about hackers, my intention is to set up one at home and hope many people try to hack it and I can learn to block hackers from that experiemental home computr hehehe,

anyway, thanks a lot for your replies.

regards
Niceman

On second thought, it might be possible to configre one of the mail servers to listen to let's say port 25 on the "localhost" interface, whereas the other listens to port 25 on your network interface.
Or even better, if you have 2 NICs, you can make them run side by side, each listening to their own NIC's.
But you'll need to pull some configuration tricks out of your hat to pull this one off (you'll need to keep both configurations separated where needed - ie separate queue directories, separate logging, separate binary programs, etc).