I need to setup a mail server, purely for relaying mail to a MS exchange server. A previous employee used Postfix on CentOS. I have limited Linux knowledge and no experience with any mail server software other than MS Exchange, so we cannot continue with this solution (unless I can find a way of managing it all from a gui).
Does anyone know of an MTA that can be configured completely by GUI? Everyone says sendmail has millions of features and loads of documentation, but I simply do not have the time to learn it. I need something that can be configured with minimal knowledge and via GUI, not command line. The only reason I'm not using Exchange is to try to save money, and hopefully it will be more secure.

cheers

Alan

Hi, welcome to LQ!

Personally I think that using a GUI for something you don't understand
makes little difference, and that really you should be just biting the
bullet and go for the text based configuration files - it's not THAT hard
to do. With "little knowledge" it's so easy to get something misconfigured
going quickly - be it exchange (bleagh!!) or postfix.

If you really feel that you must push rodents about to achieve what you
want - postfix on Centos may still be the right choice, all you need to
do is use a web-interface like Webmin, which comes with a postfix
module by default.


Cheers,
Tink

thanks Tinkster for that. I agree having the necessary knowledge is the best way to go about anything, but unfortunately, I have too many other duties to perform, and we don't have the resources to hire a Linux/sendmail professional at this time. We have several certified Exchange engineers, so unless we can find a good (but simple) solution, we will have no option but to go down the Exchange route: expensive, but less so than hiring a dedicated Linux engineer.

You can try zimbra open source edition. It has GUI administration and is easy to set up. And it can be installed on almost any distribution. In the deep corner it uses postfix but you do not need to care about it.

And yes, installation is easier than windows applications. Just one script and it is done.

far from the truth there on the cost. It will cost you much less to pay someone a 1 time fee to come in and configure your e-mail server properly via Linux, then it will to buy the license for Exchange.

http://www.jms1.net/

check out that guy and his posts. If you can not figure it out from what he has, pay him to do the work.

Eeew ... qmail!

If what you are looking for is ease of implementation, iMAIL at ipswitch.com... You can set it up in your sleep and it's affordable support options make it a likely candidate for a commercial application.

Good Luck

You could always buy yourself a used 'Barracuda Spam & Virus firewall' if all you want is an edge/gateway relay. It's a blend of Postfix, Spamassassin and ClamAV which will take a stack of domains and forward the mail on to your exchange. You can pick them up used with no 'updates' (which are tosh anyway) for pennies on eBay. They have a simple web based 'gui' that you can use.

You won't get any support from Barracuda if you buy a used unit, but I've been taken them apart for a few years now and know what makes tick - it's a cheap an elegant solution to your problem if you don't have time to learn how to set up Postfix with it's two flat text config files ;-)

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm not sure I agree with the idea of paying for someone else to set it up, as then I have the ongoing costs every time I need to make a change or something goes wrong. However, based on Tinkster's suggestion, I installed Webmin, which has allowed me to configure Sendmail (after a bit of stress: why does it only relay to hostnames, not IP's???) to do what I need: relay to my server.

Cheers all.

Alan

so what is so bad about qmail?

You may have configured sendmail for DNS resolution and reverse resolution. And if IP addresses are not resolved, it may not relay mails.