Re: Email server setup

Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark) wrote:
Hello,
I'm putting together a ubuntu linux system. It will have
a static IP address. I want to set up an email system
that I can connect to from remote sites using programs like
thunderbird on windows or linux. The world has changed a
lot since I set up sendmail on unix machines years ago and
I'm not sure what is the best direction to head to do this
today. I've found this tutorial online:

http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix

which seems like it may have everything I need, though a
little complex. I do like the idea of blocking sites for
incoming mail as I'm getting too much spam. Any advice on
how to accomplish this would be appreciated.

Thanks
Roger

As others have said, use dovecot for imap servering.

The two things you have to think about are where dovecot will get the incoming email, and how outgoing email from your client(s) will get to the rest of the world.

For getting mail in, the easiest way is to have an email account at an ISP. If they do a good job, it will be reasonably free of spam, viruses and other unwanted junk. A fetchmail script on the server can collect the mail regularly and make it available to dovecot. You can of course set up your own incoming email server (procmail or exim are two example servers), but it's more work.

For outgoing email, the easiest way is simply to send directly via your ISP's email server. If you want to channel your outgoing email through your server, I strongly recommend that you configure it to pass all external outgoing email to your ISP as a "smarthost". This tends to be much easier than sending email directly to recipient email servers, and saves you worrying about blacklists, reverse DNS, etc.

You should have a look at some example how-tos, and see if you can find one that suits your needs. A clear tutorial that fits your situation is probably the most important feature any email server could have.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Humiliation redefined
    ... likely that AOL is filtering your incoming email based on ... filtered while mail from their email server is not. ... AOL filters out any of the ISP's customers running ... My outgoing email is *not* relyed through my ISP's servers. ...
    (sci.med.transcription)
  • Re: Filesize limitations using cdoSendUsingPickup, cdoSendUsingPort
    ... Are outgoing email server for cdoSendUsingPickup and cdoSendUsingPort same? ... > I noticed that sending emails that exceed the maximum filesize limitation ...
    (microsoft.public.inetserver.asp.general)
  • Spam assassin outgoing email
    ... I recently setup an email server using postfix and spamasssin, ... to be working fine except for the outgoing email that is getting tagged as ... spam by my own server. ... To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Spam assassin outgoing email
    ... I recently setup an email server using postfix and spamasssin, ... to be working fine except for the outgoing email that is getting tagged ... Dont forget to restart the spamassassin daemon. ... To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ...
    (Debian-User)