Linux Mail Server

[Mark T. Valites]

On Thu, 3 Feb 2005, Dennis Ruzeski wrote:

> Pick up the O'Reilly Bat Book--   SENDMAIL
>
> It's the bomb.

Yes, if you drop the Bat Book on someone, it will in fact probably kill
them...

If you know you're going the sendmail route, get the bat book - bookpool
has it for ~$38:

http://www.bookpool.com/.x/ibneb3awor/sm/1565928393

Sendmail isn't exactly userfriendly though. If you're not forced to use it
and are new to email, you may want to explore one of the alternatives. The
common free ones for linux are sendmail, Postfix, qmail, and Exim.

Without starting a holy way, I fell in love with Exim this past summer for
a couple reasons & (painlessly) converted the Geneseo email servers to it
from sendmail.

I found the smtp-data time integration with both spamassassin and clamav
to be excellent. No matter "collatel damage" by bouncing messages to faked
addresses.

The access control capabilities are extremely powerfull.

The syntax of the conf file is actually readable.

It supports Maildir natively.

Virtual hosting is easy with it.

You can make it talk to any backend you want for authentication and what
to do with the email - /etc/passwd, ldap, mysql, postgres, oracle, text
files - you name it.

The mailing list is top notch. I've had several inquiries of mine answered
by the author himself.

And lastly, it's fun!

If you'd like additional info, the exim home page at:

http://www.exim.org

and the Documentation & especially the HOWTO for beginners at

http://duncanthrax.net/exiscan-acl/

can't be beat.

And Exim4 book (not the O'Reilly Exim3) book is another great resource,
but not quite free.

YMMV & the others may suit your needs just as well, but feel free to ask
if you have any specific questions.

-Mark

-- 
Mark T. Valites
Unix Systems Analyst
Computing & Information Technology
SUNY Geneseo
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