Email Server

Gene Heskett gene.heskett at verizon.net
Sun Sep 19 16:31:28 UTC 2004


On Sunday 19 September 2004 11:49, Tom Diehl wrote:
>On Sun, 19 Sep 2004, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Sunday 19 September 2004 07:37, Seb E. Payne wrote:
>> >Thanks for your quick responses. So I think that Postfix is the
>> > best thing to use.
>> >
>> >I want to use IMAP Access, Spam Checking, possibly Virus checking
>> > and webmail. I have seen this Webmail which includes groupware
>> > facilites called PHPGroupware (www.phpgroupware.org). So for a
>> > email server, I would need the following:
>> >
>> >1. Postfix MTA - To receive the mail
>> >2. Courier IMAP - To allow the clients to access the email
>> >3. PHP Groupware - Groupware and Webmail
>> >4. Spam Assassin - Spam Filtering
>> >
>> >Is this correct or do I need more than this?
>>
>> Take a look at QMail too.  We've been using it at the tv station
>> <http://www.wdtv.com> for several years with good results.
>>
>> Its versatile enough that I have an account on it accessible from
>> home, it doesn't relay and the filtering is fairly decent.  And it
>> scales well to business account sized numbers of clients without
>> needing a lot of big iron to do it.
>
>And the original author is no longer maintaining it and it is NOT
> open source. You cannot distribute a modified QMail source. Any
> modifications to bring it up to the task of handling mail in this
> day and age must be done by 3rd party patches. It is not included
> in Fedora nor is it ever likely to be given the current license. I
> know of nothing that QMail can do that postfix cannot. I am sure
> someone can come up with some obscure patch that adds some
> functionality that is not in postfix but I do not see the point.

Yeah, I'm *very well aware* of DJB's penchant for being difficult.

And I'd imagine that we're eventually going to have to switch to 
something thats being actively maintained.  OTOH, its been doing 
fairly well for 6 years now, first starting out living in an old 120 
mhz 686 cyrix box which was adequate, but when we decided to put a 
firewall in and use that box as the gateway too, we had to upgrade 
the box to a 400mhz K6, which I think is still running.  Uptimes are 
i years as we have ups's on all that stuff.

I don't know if Jim has been studying on it, but I'll mention that he 
should study up on postfix in case we have to make a quick 
transition.  I'm retired now for 2+ , so its all his baby now, dirty 
diapers and all...

>I will second the recommendation for postfix. It is currently
> maintained, it is much easier to configure than sendmail and there
> is a very active and friendly postfix community willing to help. On
> top of that it is included in Fedora core, which means you do not
> have to collect the program and all of the 3rd party patches you
> need compile and configure the thing.
>
>As another data point I recently inherited a QMail system. Granted
> it works but it lacks a lot of features that are standard with
> postfix. I am sure that if I looked I could find some 3rd party
> patches to add functionality but for me it was infinitely easier to
> just relay all mail destined for the QMail box through one of my
> postfix boxes. That way I get the best of both worlds.
>
>:-)
>
>IMO, QMail is just not worth the effort to maintain. Oh and one
> other thing the logging available with QMail is garbage. AFAICS
> there is no way to get anywhere near the detail needed to
> efficiently troubleshoot a problem. I have tried and even QMail
> bigot I know admit that the logging sucks.

Yes it does.  Its not in what one would call a normal dialect of 
english IMO.  Somewhat better than Swahili, but not a hell of a 
lot. :-)

>HTH,
>
>Tom

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.





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