Hi all

I am trying to convert our college campus to switch to linux I am starting with the mail system.

I need to create a mail server just for students that and the teachers will remain on exchange.

Now I have no trouble setting up sendmail, an imap server and webmail.

The problem is that we have to use the same domain name for both students and teachers where the mail for the students goes to the linux box and the mail for the teachers goes to the exchange server.

How can this be done and stay with the same mail domain name?

Many thanks

Stuart

Hrm...what you are asking to do here is probably going to turn into a nightmare, depending on the size of your client base.

Basically, you can do this one of three ways:

1: You make the linux server your initial gateway for accepting mail. This will accept mail for both groups. For the students, it will store the mail using sendmail or whatever mail software you want to use (personal favorite: postfix). For the teachers you would have an alias file that would forward the mail on to the exchange server.

2: You make the Exchange server your initial gateway for accepting mail. This will accept mail for both groups as well. For the teachers, the mail obviously gets stored on the Exchange server. For the students, you would need to make individual forwarders for each student in Exchange that would then forward the emails on to the linux server.

3: You create a gateway server running linux that accepts all mail. This server has an alias map on it that redirects the mail depending on recipient to either the Exchange server or your other linux mail server. This gateway server can also be running things like SpamAssassin, RBL's, greylisting, etc. to block out all of that unwanted spam. It would not need very much disk space, but a good fast connection and a decent processor with a decent amount of RAM would be good to deal with a high flow of mail.

Since you already have Exchange installed and running as the head mail server, option 2 above is going to be your easier solution. Unfortunately, going through and creating all of those aliases in Exchange is a pain, particularly if you have a lot of students.

Realistically, what you are trying to do is going to be a pain, no matter what. If you are already ingrained with students and teachers all on the same Exchange server, you may want to consider leaving it that way. Exchange is not a bad system, and offers a lot more features than any of the open source stuff available these days. The only problem obviously is cost, since you have to purchase client licenses, etc. for Exchange. Oh, and OWA is really quite nice.

One other option, if you decide to stay with the single Exchange model and not add a second server specifically for students, is to go with a hybrid of (3) above and stick a linux box in front of the Exchange server for recieving all email and running it through spam and virus filters before it ever hits the Exchange server. I have done this with one group at the University I work at, and it is quite nice. Blocks a ton of viruses and spam before it ever even hits the Exchange server, thus reducing the chances of infection. The Exchange server is also running virus protection.

Thanks, thats a great help.

The students don't have mail accounts yet so the first option sounds good as I have 12,000 students and setting that up exchange would be a pain as you say as there are only about 600 staff I can extract there account names and create aliases,

Thank again

I have to agree with Wells, however I suggest you want to consider a few more things before you jump in.

It is true that Exchange offers some features (at a high price) like web enabled mail readers, integration with AD, etc.. If the teachers already have email accounts on Exchange, undoubtedly so also do members of the administration? If so, then the Exchange server really must stay in place.

Since you don't have email for students yet, running a Linux box for mail is a very cost effective solution. If I were you, I would keep the students far away from the Exchange server. Undoubtedly as you sound like a larger school, likely you have a block of public ips allocated. Hopefully you have a free address. Have the network admin route SMTP, POP and IMAP requests from that public address to your Linux box (this is DNAT routing). The advantage of this is if the students email server goes down it is likely far less critical than the Exchange server. So teachers send/receive email using an address like english.teacher@myschool.edu, students use addresses like jane.student@students.myschool.edu. One only needs a free ip address and an entry in your DNS servers for the host "students".