Do I need a Mail Server? What do I need?
 

I'm setting up a server with minimal users (probably 3-5 users) and services. Users will use it infrequently. The server will essential store data, which is to be downloaded infrequently.

From a cost perspective, and the fact that it could be located remotely, would like to set up the server such that it emails me the syslogs regularly (say daily) so that I can determine when & whether it needs attention.

Question:
The users on the machine do not need to use mail services on this machine. But I would like to mail out the syslogs. Do I need to setup and run a "mail server"? Something like sendmail or qmail?

Any tips/guidance would be much appreciated. Thanks.

2 things -

1) You don't need to set up a proper "mail server" in the sense of multiple domains/users and mailboxes. Either sendmail or exim4 can be installed during the build. Those are mail servers, but you really wouldn't need to do much/any configuration. If the only thing you want to have happen is for it to send you syslogs, and not receive mail from the internet, it can do that with super ease. Most of the articles on the web for setting up sendmail or qmail (which I use and love) are great, but also designed for setups of 10-1000+ users, not just a daemon sending out syslogs.

2) Depending on what it is that will be infrequently downloaded, setting up a server at a remote location is probably a big mistake. To download from a remote location, you are going to use up bandwidth at both sides for the transfer. Getting consistent speeds of 1 MB/s is costly, and to transfer several hundred MB files, you can see the problem. The best place for this machine would be in the office the people who need to access the files are in. Nothing crazy, you don't need a mouse, keyboard, or monitor attached. Just plug in the network cable to the network, and the power into the wall. Then folks can connect at 100 MB/s over the LAN cable, giving you literally a hundred times faster connection, and not using any outside (internet) bandwidth. You'd also have the choice of if you want to share the files through a website (apache2) or file sharing (samba/nfs).

Peace,
JimBass

You can set up sendmail to pass mail on to a smart host for sending on further. So on my machine sendmail simply passes any mail to my isp's smtp server.

I had to change only 2 lines in my sendmail.mc file then recompile it with m4. Here are the lines I changed.

For getting mail on the same machine I use fetchmail to grab it from my isp's pop server.

PS this was on slackware I used the /usr/share/sendmail/cf/cf/sendmail-slackware.mc config file.