I would like everyones comments on how difficult it is to run one's own webserver. I would like to set up a webserver for my family. The webserver would be for a single domain. Site would include a picture gallery. The same computer would also be a mail server. It's be about 20 mail accounts. Two features I'd like to include is webmail and spam filtering for those accounts.

Bandwidth would be handled by a cable connection. I know I'd have to use something like dyndns.org to help handle name resolution.

Currently, I'm paying for web hosting, but they don't really offer spam filtering. They use an old version of PHP which means I've held off doing a photo gallery.

My skillset is primarily a windows background, but I had to support an AIX server at work. By installing slackware, I taught myself. Hence why I ask this question here.

I've come up with three options:

1) Do it completely myself. Before going this route, I was wanting to get comments.
2) Find another hosting company. Any recommendations ?
3) A happy mix of the first two? Anyone found this ?

Somewhat lengthy, but thanks ahead of time.

Welcome to LQ.

If your fairly happy with working on the commandline and with *nix systems in general then you should be able to do it no problem.

My software reccomendations would be:
Webserver: apache
SMTP: qmail
Mail storage: courier-imap
webmail: squirellmail
spam prevention: spamassasin
Antivirus: clam av

thanks. I'm reading about couier now.

I only have a couple points to add to David's excellent recommendations.

If you don't have a static IP with your cable connection, consider seeing if you can get one before you setup an mail server. The problem with dynamic IPs and mail servers is that when your IP changes all of your email ends up going to that old IP until you have updated your DNS records and it's had time to propagate (usually 24hrs or so). Worse case senario being it was reassigned to someone else whom also runs a mail server and is now getting all of your mail. Although that's unlikely. However, if it seldom changes and you're not too awefully concerned about loosing an email or 2 in the worse case senario, then it'll probably be fine.

Also make sure your ISP doesn't block inbound/outbound traffic on port 25. A growing number of them are doing that these days. If they only block outbound, then you can get around that by relaying your mail through their server instead of directly connecting to other email servers to send emails. Inbound blockage is a bit more difficult and will most likely require you to pay someone like dnydns to catch all your email and then foward it on to you on a non-standard port that your ISP doesn't block.

Here's a link to a good (I think) toaster for setting up qmail, courier & vpopmail email system:
http://www.shupp.org/toaster/

And why not register yourself a domain while your at it, instead of using dyndns ones?

Just want to offer my two bits,

I did it, and its not that hard at all. I'm running a
AMD Duron 850Mhz
256 SDRAM
40 Gig hard drive
GeForce4MX 440

I even did it on my old
P166, 28Mb ram, 500Mb hard drive

and it worked, but loading up php and using mysql slowed it down.

If you use slackware, you'll find ALOT of help. be it here, linuxpackages.net, or the tutorial pages (http://jetblackz.cjb.net/ for example) (edit: soz, fixed wrong link...)

The hard drive, if 40 gigs, is big enough even to store some movies and music to share around the house. The gfx card is very cheap now, its has the power to do everything you need to do in that box, and is very easy to set up the nvidia drivers for it. You could go for a better cpu, and some more ram though.

make sure you update slackware to current, and have all the packages you need, like apache, etc...

As for the domain name, i'd suggest you ask your ISP how much extra it would cost per month to have a static ip address.. usually its 2 or 3 pounds. IMO, its easier with it.. less hassle.. As for your domain name, check this site out.
http://www.ukreg.com/
i've been using it for a year now, and its alright. they're cheap for .co.uk domains... (something like 6 quid for 2 year contract)

I'll PM you with a link to my site to have a look at what you can do or have in the end when everything works.

Hope this helps a bit... feel free to ask me on any technicalities here and there

Hmm, cant PM you for some reason... Oh well, just add to the url at the bottom
/mail/ (for imap squirrelmail web client)
/forum/ (for php_bb forum.. still empty)
/xushi/ (for a photo gallery...)

its not much, but i like it

thanks to all. what's going to be the best way to handle mail storage?

On the AIX mail server at work, all the mail files were stored in /mail/data on a different physical volume that was raid'ed. I was thinking about doing a similar setup.

I don't know if it would be better to open up a new thread?

I would just raid your /home partition and store all the e-mail in the users folders.

For the dynamic IP problem, there are several sites out there that you can set up a "static" account with that will transfer all traffic to your new IP every time your ip changes.

one last matter: backups.

I know i could write cron jobs to back up the mail files on a specified time. What happnens when someone has their mai file open when the job runs?

What media do you recommend? I'd imagine cd-burners are supported, but how difficult are they to write to?

Again, thanks for the advice.

i used to run my own server like the one you want to setup... i found it was way more convenant to just get a good web host like Bluehost.com they are cheap, and will give you WAY more then you need, plus you get a .com domain included for free!

I just decided to go for it myself this past week . I loaded fedora core 2 and followed some instructions and downloads i got from http://qmailrocks.org for the projects. Being completely new to linux didn't help but I was able to get it all up and running. A couple late nights but the documentation was really good.

I'm testing it now for myself but if all goes well I will be using it to host 500-600 mailboxes and an actual business.

Good luck. Love to hear if you finally went ahead and did it and how it's all working. I also reccommend getting a static ip. I also found a great broadband service on http://sourceforge.net/.

They gave me 8 static IPs and 6.0 download and 768 upload for a great price. Just ordered it last week and am hoping I'll have it soon.