My Windows 2003 server seems to have died. My biggest problem right now is that means my Exchange e-mail server is down. Of course, DNS and active directory is down as well, so I can't even access the internet.

I have SuSE 9.3 running on a Dell PowerEdge server. I'm considering installing 10.2 on it, mostly because I've been having problems installing software on it.

Now originally I wanted to install some sort of Exchange-like groupware. But all the group-ware packages seem very complex to install. Maybe later.

So, I'm looking for some hints on the best way to get a linux email server up and running by Monday, along with dns and dhcp.

I would like something I could run with thunderbird, or a similar GUI e-mail client.

I like IMAP a lot, but right now I'm thinking simple. The only real requiement is that I can use a gui client and it handles attachments.

My setup uses fetchmail (and freepops for msn/gmail/yahoo mail) and postfix (a more elaborate sendmail) to deliver mail. My GUI is evolution, also bear in mind that my machine is standalone.
In Slackware dns and dhcp can be handled by dnsmasq, it's simple to configure and use and you should be able to find it for suse too.

You will also need an imap/pop server like dovecot.

Plenty of howtos at www.postfix.org

Thanks guys. Postfix was on the 9.3 CD's. I downloaded the i586 version of Dovcote but it gave me dependency hell. It needed a mysql library, but the mysql library wouldn't install because it would break other dependencies. I've been getting that a lot.

The plan now is to try to install 10.2 over the internet.

I assume that dovecot will work with thunderbird? I really want a gui client.

Any advice here on installing postfix and dovecot? I'm not really understanding how they work together. I know about RTFM, but I'm kind of jonesing here without my e-mail.

Dovecot usually runs pretty much out of the box. Just start it and it will find the mailboxes and you're off

If not, post back here.

Don't worry about the client, thunderbird, evolution, even pine will connect to your email server, just concentrate on getting the server up for now.

Well, I bit the bullet and spent the last couple days installing openSuSE 10.2. That's a story in itself!

I got postfix and dovecot running, but I can't connect to it with KMail. I keep getting "Unknown host: LocalDomain"

The problem is probably DNS. I'm having a hard time understanding the YAST DNS server program. I had this set up in Windows Server 2003.

Here's my setup. I have a server with a fixed IP address, let's call it servername. I have a local domain, let's call it localdomain.

I have 4 internet domains. internetdomain1 is where I want to send my mail to, both inside and outside. I have email also sent to internetdomain2, which I want rerouted to internetdomain1.

Bear in mind that I would like the DNS setup so I can run these four website domains from apache, eventually.

Also, I have a cisco pix box that does address translations between my outside addresses and my 10.x.x.x inside addresses. That shouldn't be a problem since I can just change the inside addresses from my old Windows 2003 server IP to my new server IP.

Any help would be greately appreciated, as my email is down at this point. I have Webmin running, so the postfix and dovecot configuration is pretty easy.

I'm posting this on my XP notebook hooked into the SuSE box using freeNX, so some things are going right!

Have you tried setting up KMail to connect without the domain part? It should look in the local /etc/hosts file to find the appropriate machine. If you are not constantly plugging and unplugging new machines into your network then maybe you can do without DNS and DHCP on your internal network, I find it simpler just to use fixed IP addresses locally and attach a name to each host in their /etc/hosts files.

I have never successfully had the pleasure of installing suse, it always gives me problems... but that's my experience. Don't give up, just tinker around with it. I am not on my DNS server at the moment, your DNS program is probably different to what I am used to (dnsmasq), you may also be having problems with DHCP at the moment, make sure your DHCP server (dhcpd) is dishing out IP addresses to your machines first, otherwise DNS is useless! Otherwise, see above and just use fixed IP addresses for now.

Well, I couldn't get contact to connect with dovecote even with my servername that's in hosts. So maybe I have other problems.

Are you saying I don't need local DNS for the mail server to work? Obviously I have the outside DNS records at my ISP set up correctly.

So someone sends me mail at doug@internetdomain1. The ISP's MX record sends the e-mail to the IP address on my outside DSL modem. My Cisco pix box looks at the IP address and port
and routes the mail right to my inside server.

Is postfix and dovecot going to be able to handle this without having to look up IP addresses on the local DNS server?

The server has a fixed IP. The DHCP is only for workstations, like my notebook I take back and forth to work everyday.

Also, on the DSN, do I have to flush caches on the server after changes? The changes I made didn't seem to be always working.

Also, does anyone have a good explanation of how YAST handles DNS?

Thanks!

What firewall settings do you have? You'll need port 143 open for imap connections to dovecot (and port 25 for sending)

If these are open, what does your mail log file say?

Edit ps try using the server's IP so you can rule out name resolution

Thanks! I'm getting my mail!

Once I realised what you were trying to say, I concentrated on hooking up to my server, instead of the domain. After a bit of trail and error I started being able to send myself messages. I got minicom running and changed the IP addresses on my pix box, but I wasn't getting outside mail.

But then this morning before work I fired up good old webmin, added the server IP address to the network interface on postfix, and in a few minutes started getting my mail!

I disabled the SuSE firewall, as I got a Cisco pix box for a firewall.

But mail is working now! First time I've ever got mail without using Exchange!

Great news indeed!
Good luck with your internal DNS/DHCP.... or is that working too?

The DNS was easy to set up as far as internet access. And DHCP works very well.

The next step is to get my notebook to log into the linux domain.

oh, I meant INTERNAL network... i should perform the same as your old network once you have it up and running.