On Thu, 2009-09-10 at 12:47 -0500, martinprowe wrote: > I've been trying for months. Every which way I turn seems to be too > difficult for me to resolve! > The biggest problem is knowing how the components fit together. I use Postfix and here's how it fits together. This assumes you're using Postfix, which seems to be one of the easiest MTAs to configure: - Talk to your ISP first. If your ISP will agree to deliver mail direct to your MTA with SMTP, it can deliver incoming mail direct to Postfix. If they say you must collect it from the mailbox(es) they provide for you, use fetchmail to collect incoming mail using POP, POP3 or IMAP. Fetchmail needs a way of delivering messages to Postfix: usually this is done by postfix.sendmail, a small utility that delivers mail to Postfix. - the default MTA is sendmail, which is hard to configure, especially if you try to learn it with the O'Reilly book, which has large chunks missed out. Instead, install postfix using your distro's package installer and then use 'alternatives' to replace sendmail with Postfix. Then configure Postfix to suit your requirements. The documentation at www.postfix.org is good and fairly easy to follow. - if your users are all using Linux logins on the machine running Postfix and are happy with command line mail client programs, you're done: they can use 'mutt', 'mail' or equivalent programs to handle their mail. If you want to use mail clients that are on other computers and/or use POP or IMAP to read mail, you'll need to run Dovecot, which is a POP and IMAP server and runs pretty much out of the box. I use Evolution this way. The mail clients should be configured to read mail via POP or IMAP and to send it using SMTP to talk directly to Postfix. - Thats it. If you had huge numbers of mail users you'd need to set up Postfix virtual accounts for them, but with 6 or so, just create a Linux login on the mail server for each of them. The login name and password act as their mail user name and password. - If you want to run anti-virus software, look at ClamAV. You want spam trapping? Look at Spamassassin. If you want both, look at using amavis-new. Amavis-new is run as a mail processing service by Postfix and it manages both ClamAV and Spamassassin. > Dovecote, postfix, sendmail - I've tried them all. Linux variants, > brand versions, iffy patches, > There's nothing iffy or out of date about fetchmail, Postfix or Dovecot. > documentation - doesn't it just add up to barrel 'o fun? > As I said, the Postfix site has good stuff in it and they have a users mail list if you have unusual requirements. After studying the sendmail book and fighting with it for about a week, I switched to using Postfix and had it installed and running immediately. Hald a day later it was fully tweaked to my requirements. Fetchmail is reasonably straight forward once you know what it does and why. Dovecot is extremely straight forward. I change about two things in its config file and could probably avoid even that. > I'd even pay - if I could find someone who knew what they were > talking about! > If you need more detail about anything I've mentioned above or assistance toward setting up a small mail system, talk to me offline since this is pretty much off-topic for the wine-users mail list. > All I wanted was a small integrated POP/SMTP/DB server that I can use > for half-a-dozen local users. Just like my lovely cuddly hMail that > I've been using for years. > Have you looked as Scalix? I've not used it, but it claims to be a fully integrated SME solution and does offer a free Community Edition. http://www.scalix.com/ Martin
