I am running Mandrake 9.2 as a server with server software like Apache and Postfix installed.

Well I no longer need Postfix because I am not running a mail server, and I would like to completely uninstall it for security sake. The less software running the less security vulnerabilities.

To safely and completely uninstall it, should I just search for "Postfix" under the software management wizard? Is there related software that I should uninstall too?

Thanks,
ian

The mail service is there for scripts and scheduled tasks to send their reports, so you shouldn't remove it from a server. The default configuration is nailed down so only accounts on the machine itself can send anything - it isn't a security risk.

Go into /etc/postfix/aliases and set `root' to go to your own account name or a full e-mail address. Save the changes and type 'newaliases' to activate the changes. You will then get daily reports sent to either your local mailbox or the address that you specified, as well as mail messages whenever there's a problem with a cron job.

wow... I didn't know that. Thanks.

However, even if Linux does have it's default mail for logs, will that stop if I uninstall the Postfix package?

Thanks again.

Yes - without postfix there is no way for msec, cron, logwatch etc. to dispatch reports.

Since postfix will reject network connections even if your firewall is open on port 25 (it isn't by default on Mandrake), doesn't run as root (unlike sendmail), and will spending most of it's time as a 'sleeping' process using little resources, you won't gain anything by turning it off.

OTOH, silencing the system watchdogs on a public-facing server would weaken it's security - from experience the daily reports are often the way you first find out about attempted hacks and system problems.

One more question:

I use Mandrake 9.2 and I'm not sure if this particular option is available on other distributions. I'm sure it is in some form or another.

In Mandrake you can configure the "Security Administrator" with a username of email address and all security alerts will be sent to that username or email address.

Is this any different that configuring the "root" in /etc/postfix/aliases to my email address?

ian

I think it's the same thing, but unfortunately I don't have a Mandrake install any more to check.

Alright. Thanks for the help.

ian

i would like to install qmail for my MTA but i have postfix installed inside my SUSE 9.1 box. will it somehow affect my mail configuration later or will there be any conflict between those two MTA's?

thanks in advance

syahid,

It would be a good idea to open a fresh thread for this on the Networking forum.

Before replacing the supplied MTA with a source-compiled system you need to have a good understanding of how the new MTA works, since you won't have a package to set up things like mailbox spools and log rotation for you.

Both Qmail and SUSE take non-standard approaches to some things, so you need to have some more in-depth knowledge of qmail and SUSE's peculiarities (Maildir, SUSEConfig etc.), and these aren't areas that either I (or probably most people looking at the Newbie forum) can give you the necessary support for.

If this sounds a little scary, it's because the combination you've chosen will make this an unusually complex project. I would advise either using Postfix instead of Qmail, or using Red Hat or FreeBSD as the host if Qmail is a requirement.