Hello,

I apologize in advance if this question has already been asked and answered, but searching through the posts I have not come upon a complete answer.

I am trying to set up a mail server so that I can have both pop3 access when I am at my home network and squirrelmail to get email when I am on the road. As I am the only person that will be using the server and I don't anticipate much usage.

My first question is what software do I need to install? After reading some of the other posts they mention many things. So I have decided on:

1. Postfix (because of other posts mentioning that it is good for beginners)
2. Courier-imap for MailDir (anyways that what I think it is for)
3. Apache (webmail)
4. PHP4 so that I can use Squirrelmail
5. MySQL (keep track of preferences and addresses in Squirrelmail)
6. Squirrelmail for obvious reasons

Is this all I need to install and am I assuming the correct usage for each piece of software? I have read some tutorials on setting up a mail server and they all seem to say different things about what software to use to set up an email server and I am trying to do this as minimally as possible. Any suggestions or help would be appreciated.

Next, I have installed MySQL on Slack 9.0 and have it appears to be running okay (time will tell I suppose). My question is when I start the MySQL daemon I get not 1 but 10 new running processes at the cost of 6.3 megs per process. I kind of figure that is normal, but I don't have a lot of memory. Also I am using the my-small.cnf. I was wondering do I need all those running processes and is there a way to cut those processes down to 2-4, thus saving me some memory because I am not using much in the way of database. As I said before I am the only person using the computer. I suppose I should ask do I really need MySQL for addresses or will and LDAP server be easier to set up?

This is getting so confusing to me.

Thanks for the help in advance,
Reid

First off, I personally don't think you need both IMAP and POP, but if you think you do, feel free to correct me

Second, if you choose to not go with pop, you have the list up there correct. To further that, I've used the exact same tools, and will be more than happy to walk you through any parts that give you a rough time (right off the bat, in your proftpd.conf change the mailbox type to Maildir, you should see the section when it comes up ).

About MySQL, I'm actually not sure how to kill off those processes. I'd suppose you could restrict it by a directive in your .cnf, but I wouldn't know exactly what. And it is powerful, but I'd stick with it personally (because I love it's documentation). I don't use Addresses, but might just set something up so I can assist there as well, get the complete feel for your idea up there.

What distro are you going to run this all off of? Slack9? Just curious more than anything I guess, I'd suggest to get all the source packages you can, and do it that way (except MySQL of course ).

Cool

Hey thanks so much for the reply and help. Really I suppose I was wondering if I was in the right direction in my thinking. Boy there is a lot of information out there that it gets mindboggling.

As far as POP goes, I want to be able to get my email off the server and on to my home computer. I suppose that I can do this via IMAP. So if you feel that IMAP is sufficient then that is what I will go with.

For the MySQL daemons, I only have 192 megs of memory available (plus swap) and I am trying to not use swap because of performance degradation as I am using an old computer. For this reason I am trying to free up some memory for apache, IRC server and the other daemons running. I agree the documentation for MySQL is very good, but so far I can't find where it talks about how to limit the number of daemons starting up.

I am using Slack 9. I thought about going to FreeBSD but Slack serves me well. So far I have built everything from sources. Because I am still learning about the *nix world and this provides a good way to learn how things are done and it also allows me to know exactly what it going on. I could probably use some help in the future on setting this up but I will try my hardest to get it going first and by RTFMing to the max.

Thanks again,
Reid