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01-13-2011, 10:57 AM
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#1
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Member
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 56
Rep:
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Setting up CentOS email
I'm trying to setup a couple POP accounts in CentOS. I started doing a tutorial that had me install dovecot, and now I have dovecot running but I can't connect at all.
Does anyone know of a simple way to get email up and running? It seems like it should be easier than the 14 step tutorials I was finding on Google.
Also, should I leave dovecot or try and remove it?
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01-13-2011, 11:09 AM
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#2
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Senior Member
Registered: Aug 2006
Location: Detroit, MI
Distribution: GNU/Linux systemd
Posts: 4,278
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01-13-2011, 08:13 PM
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#3
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Member
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 56
Original Poster
Rep:
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Doesn't help - I don't have a GUI.
You'd think there would just be a couple commands to setup basic email.
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01-14-2011, 05:11 AM
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#4
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Senior Member
Registered: Jul 2007
Distribution: Gentoo
Posts: 2,125
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Unfortunately, no. Setting up a mail system is one of the more complex things that a Linux user can try to accomplish. In your case, you are only setting up the POP/IMAP portion, which I am really not certain will make things easier or harder.
When you say you can connect at all, lets start by checking a few basic things.
1 - Do you have the proper ports open in your firewall, both server (software) level and hardware (router) level?
2 - is the dovecot process running? What is the output of pd aux | grep dovecot?
3 - Is the process listening on a port? What is the output of netstat -pta | grep dovecot (probably need to run as root)
4 - do a restart of Dovecot. Then look at your syslog, mail.log, etc and see if there are any error messages associated with Dovecot. If so, what are the error messages?
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01-14-2011, 11:49 AM
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#5
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Member
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 56
Original Poster
Rep:
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Thanks for trying to help, but last night I said "fuck it" and installed Google Business email. Got it up and running, and integrated into my scripts in probably am hour - $100 a year for two emails.
I still need to figure out how to setup a mail server though. We are launching a multi-domain, hosted CMS, and $50/email/year is way to much.
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01-15-2011, 09:29 AM
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#6
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Senior Member
Registered: Jul 2007
Distribution: Gentoo
Posts: 2,125
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I can understand why you would feel that way. Setting up a mail server is usually a difficult and frustrating task that requires integration with a lot of different systems including DNS, data bases, anti-virus, and a host of daemon processes and configuration files all with an arcane syntax.
Here is a some advice for when you decide to try again. The most popular email system seems to be Postfix. It is feature rich and works very well, with a large support base of plug ins for all sorts of features. I personally use it and host multiple virtual domains (accounts not tied to Linux user accounts), web mail, domain key filtering, anti-spam and anti-virus. I then use Dovecot for POP/IMAP and SASL Authentication. My webmail, POP, and IMAP connections use TLS for encryption. My accounts are hosted via a MySQL backend and I manage the accounts with a PHP application called Postfixadmin. From the description of your needs, I think this would work well for you. I use it in combination with a tool called Amavisd-new that co-ordinates many of the plugins. To get a basic server up and running, Postfix pretty much works out of the box. However, it can get complicated to install all the other features I mention above. It will take time to figure out and get working and you will become very good a reading log files and finding subtle problems while starting and stopping processes. In the process you WILL get frustrated with it at times.
Other options that are fairly popular include Zimbra and Citadel. I believe that both of these are a lot easier to setup. One of them is free for limited use, but for enterprise purposes gets a little more expensive.
Once you get your own mail system up and running you will face a set of challenges associated with getting other providers to recognize you as a valid email sender. This will take time, patience, and investigation. You will need to register with some services like Hotmail, add at least an SPF record for Yahoo, and add a google_id for gmail.
When you decide that you are ready, there are plenty of tutorials and how to documents available. You need to be careful with them and try to understand what you are doing rather than copying them verbatim. Often times the settings won't be exactly what you need, correct for your installation, or even contain 'errors' caused by web-page translations like substitution of ` and '. There is also lots of help available on the forums.
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