Hi all,

I am planning to setup an email and web server for my intranet. The requirement is a simple email system where, about 25 users should be able to communicate among themselves through email withing the intranet. And a web server to host an Intranet site which will be meant for students,will have a student login page and get details about their classes and should be able to download small files.

How do i go about this? I know i have to setup a DNS server, which i am in the process of completing it. But, is there any preference on the sequence of installation, any preference on email and web servers you all prefer. Is there any integration issues between the email and webservers? I am doing this on Ubuntu 8.04 - AMD64.

Thanks a ton!
Avinash

For your mailserver:

Install Postfix as the MTA, this is easy to setup.
Install MailScanner with ClamAV and SpamAssassin for security purposes, and virus and spam filtering.

For your web server:

Install Apache as your HTTP daemon.
Install Joomla on top of Apache. This is an easy to use CMS (Content Management System)

Hope this helps!

What is this content management, is this really necessary for an intranet?

Have a look at the Wikipedia article.

A CMS basically allows multiple people to edit a website and post news, content and documents on it, which is perfect for a intranet site.

Thank you. Is sendmail same as Postfix?

No, Sendmail and Postfix are two different MTAs.

Sendmail has a mailer program called "sendmail", and other MTAs such as Postfix and Exim provide a similar compatibility binary. The sendmail program is used by many other programs, so MTAs provide necessary functionality in their sendmail programs.

Thank you for the information!

I have a domain name "abcd.org" registered on the internet, website managed by an ISP and its working fine. I am planning to have an Intranet site for the students for which i am configuring DNS, can i create a domain say for example, "students.abcd.org" which would be accessible only inside the office? Coz, all the machines have access to the internet so will there be a conflict? The students should be able to access the site using their web browser through the url, http://students.abcd.org!

Kindly help as this is very crucial before i proceed with installing mail and web servers.

Thanks

Will i have to use mysql to store the mail userID's and passwords? or is it a part of postfix?

Sure, just create the appropriate A record with your DNS provider, pointing it to the host that will serve the website.

If this machine is on a LAN with RFC 1918 private IP space, you'll need your own internal DNS that resolve any hosts for that private LAN. (Don't place RFC 1918 IPs in public DNS servers). If there is a NATing route providing RFC 1918 IPs, then you can use public DNS to point to the router's WAN IP, and perform port fowarding on the router to the host's private IP host/port.

No, you don't have to use MySQL at all. You can use any of the many table types supported by postfix. See output of postconf -m. MySQL is entirely overkill for most user's needs, and cunnecessarily omplicates the problem.

Thanks for the response. Actually it was silly question, I spoke with the techie who has handling out domain name and website who suggested almost the same and also told me that i can have a subdomain and have it pointed to my server in the office which means i will have to pay for an IP address!

DNS providers should provide a reasonable number of subdomains (or RRs - resource records) as part of their service. Charging for every change is petty. You can find registrars that will provide unlimited number of RRs without their having to interfere.

I don't understand the addition IP address charge. If your server has *any* IP address, you can point an A record at that IP address either via its public IP, or via port fowarding on a router that has a WAN IP. In the case of dynamic IPs, you can use dynamic DNS to keep the record up to date with a dynamically leased IP.

For your internal subnet it is best to setup a local DNS server and use a domain such as abc.lan or abc.local (something that is not a public tld). You can then have your webserver run as students.abc.lan and let them access that site.

Check out the DNS Howto for some good examples and background info.

I don't have a router or a wan IP in my office. The charge for IP comes into picture because, i would be maintaining the webpages in my server inside my office not on the server where the main webpages are maintained and stored which is done by a service provider - ISP. So, even if the ISP creates a subdomain and redirects it to my server so that my page loads. This will require a valid IP right?

What garyalex suggested also sounds good. I can just create a domain by name students.local.lan and have students access it locally.

Anyway, thank you all for your answers, now i have a clear picture before i start implementing all this.

Have a nice weekend