looking for a good mail server

[robin1]

hello everybody,

I'm looking to setup a mail server on my mandrake 9.2 box...
can someone recomend a few mail server that i can look at...

- must be free.
- must have the option to access it over internet
- and it looks nice and cool....interms of color and graphic..

thanks everybody..

[blobaugh]

Qmail is becoming the new standard. It is small easy and easy to use. I have even heard of large companies running thousands of users off a 300 mhz machine with it.

[serz]

From what I know, sendmail is the most used one. But.. I also heard that it can give you *some* headaches.

[nunder]

I've used both, and would recommend qmail. It's small, fast, and it's built from the ground up with security in mind. Also, as far as color and graphics, I'm assuming that you're talking about a webmail client to access the mail server. A couple of good webmail clients (that I've used) are Horde, Squirrelmail, and Neomail (in order of preference). Best of luck! Also, while you're at it, I'd look into clamav and spamassassin, but that's just my 2cents. Best of luck!!:cool:

[Dutch Mafia-boy.]

I'll be the third to highly recommend Qmail. It rocks!

http://www.qmail.org/top.html

http://www.lifewithqmail.org/lwq.html

[cidc]

is webmail something you really want, cause if it you might want to use couirer imap, with squirrelmail(WEB front end). I was going to use Qmail, but being quite new to linux found it very hard to setup. Couirer setup fine.

I use squrreilmail, courier running on a p2 200 and it hosts 5 accounts, with no probs. I access all my mail across the internt.

[chort]

Whatever you do, don't use Sendmail. It has a horrible history of security problems, including two major flaws this year. Postfix, Qmail, and Exim are all designed as replacements for Sendmail. Qmail is very powerful (like Sendmail) but also very complex. Postfix is by far the most simple MTA I've ever setup. I don't have much experience at all with Exim.

[shad0w]

Go with Postfix.

Postfix.org (http://www.postfix.org)

You can find tons of tutorials for it on the net, search google.

I use it for an anti-spam gateway using Spam Assassin, Amavisd-new and razor. I'm blocking 20% of spam using RBL's, and another 15% with Assassin/Amavisd.

Very easy to configure, fast, reliable, and secure. You can subscribe to the yahoo group: Postfix-Users (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/postfix-users)

Wietse Venema is active in the group.

What is Postfix?

It is Wietse Venema's mailer that started life as an alternative to the widely-used Sendmail program.

Postfix attempts to be fast, easy to administer, and secure, while at the same time being sendmail compatible enough to not upset existing users. Thus, the outside has a sendmail-ish flavor, but the inside is completely different.

[Zoist]

Postfix is good, Qmail is a good sendmail alternative I hear, but I prefer sendmail. It seems to always work for me. All you need to do is make sure it has the latest security fixes added to it because it has a history of being targeted by the bad guys.

[qweqwe1]

qmail is the way to go. i was using sendmail then i switched to qmail. qmail is small, fast, realiable and above all secure.

-qweqwe

[shad0w]

I would have to disagree with qmail as the way to go. Postfix is the answer.

[db369]

hi, i'm trying to make the switch from windows to linux. i've got a debian box set up and installed apache2/php/mysql/openssl (latest versions) all successfully on a p2 166mhz laptop. surprisingly, it actually runs a little faster tan my p3/600mhz win2k system....

ahem, enough patting myself on the back...

any thoughts on using exim with qpopper? i'd like to be able to pop mail remotely. no need for relay. what's the best (and most secure) way to go about this?

also, where can i read up on pop3/smtp a little more. being used to using argosoft, i though i understood the protocols. i'm realizing there's a lot more to it and i'm having some trouble understanding a lot of the documentation for these products....

thx!

[Cadillac84]

Originally posted by db369
hi, i'm trying to make the switch from windows to linux. i've got a debian box set up and installed apache2/php/mysql/openssl (latest versions) all successfully on a p2 166mhz laptop. surprisingly, it actually runs a little faster tan my p3/600mhz win2k system....

ahem, enough patting myself on the back...

any thoughts on using exim with qpopper? i'd like to be able to pop mail remotely. no need for relay. what's the best (and most secure) way to go about this?

also, where can i read up on pop3/smtp a little more. being used to using argosoft, i though i understood the protocols. i'm realizing there's a lot more to it and i'm having some trouble understanding a lot of the documentation for these products....

thx!

I have been using Exim for a year or so. I like it very much. Lots of info available from source website, and the author will actually answer email questions if you get stuck.

I installed ver 4.10 and had a little trouble getting it to do something special that my paranoid boss wanted (copies of all incoming and outgoing mail to a special mailbox so that he could monitor for non-business usage).

I have updated to 4.20, but I see 4.30 is up now.

Highly recommend.

go to www.exim.org to get the latest. The makefile info is broken down into sections like "things you will have to do" "things you may have to do" "things you probably don't have to do" "things you almost never have to do" -- so you can easily get your config file done and make it and install it.

I'm very high on Exim -- and a lot of really big systems use it (pretty sure Earthlink is using (oddly) an outdated version of Exim (3.33). Maybe they should upgrade :D

I am also using qpopper 4.0.5 and it works fine once I get it started. Problem is that I can't seem to get it started when I want, and once I get it going, I can't figure out what I did to get it started. (:confused: )

But, I think I am having an xinetd issue that I don't understand.

One of the cool things about Qpopper is that it allows an administrator to place messages like a bulletin board, so if you have new users, you can set it up that they get messages about system use or whatever.

good luck

[chort]

FYI qpopper will work with any MTA.

Shad0w: While I agree with you that Postfix is the MTA of choice, it would be useful for you to state why you think Postfix is better than Qmail. Statements like "I would have to disagree with qmail as the way to go. Postfix is the answer." don't provide any useful insight and only waste space in a thread.

Have you tried both Qmail and Postfix? If not, you're in no position to say one is better than the other. If you have, then what are the reasons you believe Postfix is better?

One newbie telling another isn't a very good way to learn about an OS and software--in fact, it's a very dangerous way.

[Gaxus]

I was recently using qmail... then switched to postfix, just for something 'completely different'. :D

They both seem to perform pretty fast and I can't tell difference between the two in speed from just observation. I have to say however, that postfix was the easier of the two to set up.

Although I am getting pissed off that neither of them do smtp auth out of the box without major configurations/patches, etc (haven't had any luck getting it to work with postfix OR qmail).

Exim turned me off cause it didn't seem that modular... (that, and the documentation scares me :eek: )