Hey guys, I have a very nice Debian server. It runs well, it is just being used at file storage and backup storage. I would like to install qmail on it to learn how to host my own email and such.

I have information from the web about how to install it, but when I do the apt-get for any of the packages such as ucspi-tcp or qmail-src I get output stating that it can not find the package. Does anyone know how else I could get these packages and install them? Thanks.

-Ricky

Are you stuck on qmail? Why not postfix?

IMHO if you don't live and breath mail servers qmail is masochism. I have set up qmail as a learning experience. One of the main motivations for creating qmail in the first place was that sendmail historically has had security troubles. Sendmail's track record has improved, and this argument is somewhat irrelevant.

Postfix is easy to setup, secure, and fast.
Many great setup walkthroughs for postfix out there. When they say "life with qmail"- they really mean you must be in it for life.

Oh and the maintainer of qmail will not allow most distros to make packages because he doesn't approve of their directory structures, users, groups, etc.. Standard repositories for debian likely do not contain qmail. Also, I believe that qmail is not gpl, I think it has it's own license.

Wow that's great info. No I'm not stuck on qmail, I only know its newer than sendmail. I am a Linux/Unix novice at best. I will certainly try postfix, I was just trying to learn to make any kind of email server on my Unix box. Thanks!

Good

You can apt-get postfix.

Here is a full featured howto that should help you get your sea-legs:

http://howtoforge.com/virtual_users_...ix_debian_etch


Have fun