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Old 26th May 2008
cajunman4life cajunman4life is offline
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Default MTA thoughts

Well just as soon as Cox Business gets around to my place, I'll be setting up an MTA for use on my FreeBSD server. It'll serve email for my small business as well as home/family.

I want to get a feel for what the community is using in terms of MTA's and get your thoughts on them. I've heard good things about postfix. Also note, I haven't had much time to research this yet, so be gentle
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Old 26th May 2008
corey_james corey_james is offline
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definitely recommend postfix ... but that's only coz i think it's easy to learn and it's all i've bothered to learn as everyone i've worked for uses it
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Old 26th May 2008
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i am using postfix as an MTA from the first time i had to setup an email server.
things i have noticed:
* syntax is very easy and understandable
* documentation is very complete and accurate
* easy to setup with a database backend (currently using mysql to store the domains/accounts)
* there is postfix admin a web GUI which is pretty easy to setup and use for administration of you email server
and here is a very good and self explanatory tutorial.
keep in mind that postfix is the only MTA i have ever used so i can't make a comparison to another one. others are more than welcomed to comment upon this.

/v
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Old 26th May 2008
corey_james corey_james is offline
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don't pump the use of web interfaces for applications ... sheesh!! :P
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Old 26th May 2008
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I'm not trying to pump the use of web interfaces for applications or advertise such a software.
As i see it, when you are talking about a mail server where you have a lot of domains and each domain is maintained by another person this kind of web interfaces come in handy.
As I have noticed from the OP that's not his case, but i think that the existence of a web interface to manage your domain/accounts database it's a plus for any kind of mail server.

my 2 cents
/v
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Old 26th May 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by corey_james View Post
don't pump the use of web interfaces for applications ... sheesh!! :P
When you manage 300 domains you need an interface.

George
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Old 26th May 2008
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I settled with Postfix as well. I've used sendmail and qmail in the past but for the past few years it has been Postfix 100% .. very straight forward and easy to understand.

For home/small business, ASSP seems to be a nice compliment for spam filtering.
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Old 26th May 2008
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Re spam and postfix, there's a nice little article on the CentOS wiki about some simple spam filtering, with links to more detailed articles.
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Old 26th May 2008
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We use assp for antispam and we filter 30000 messages a day.

Pros: Very effective and it doesn't interfere with the MTA
Cons: High CPU usage, bad port maintainer.

George
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Old 26th May 2008
cajunman4life cajunman4life is offline
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Well, postfix it is then.

The web interface: Can you run that from another server (like you can phpMyAdmin and connect to a remote database)? I'd prefer not to have apache on my mail server if possible.

If not, I can NFS export the necessary filesystems from the MX to the WWW server.
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Old 26th May 2008
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I would probably use postfix or qmail
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Old 26th May 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cajunman4life View Post
Well, postfix it is then.

The web interface: Can you run that from another server (like you can phpMyAdmin and connect to a remote database)? I'd prefer not to have apache on my mail server if possible.

If not, I can NFS export the necessary filesystems from the MX to the WWW server.
No you can't. Like you said you may run phpMyadmin on a different database but the host must use apache. In any case I think that postfix is your best choice. If you want to handle a lot of domains then you will need a web based tool. Otherwise you can do it by hand.
Also consider the DNS issues that might arise from a small SOHO mail server.

Regards,
George
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Old 26th May 2008
cajunman4life cajunman4life is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gkontos View Post
No you can't. Like you said you may run phpMyadmin on a different database but the host must use apache. In any case I think that postfix is your best choice. If you want to handle a lot of domains then you will need a web based tool. Otherwise you can do it by hand.
Also consider the DNS issues that might arise from a small SOHO mail server.

Regards,
George
So I won't then be able to run the web interface from my main web server. That's alright, I can install apache and setup firewall rules to allow connections from the local subnet only. BUT - That's if I determine I need the web interface. By the way, what is the web interface called? I'll start checking it out.

Also - What DNS issues might arise from a SOHO mail server?
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Old 26th May 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mtx View Post
* there is postfix admin a web GUI ...
/v
i found this web interface pretty good and simple to manage/use.

there's even a port /usr/ports/mail/postfixadmin

/v
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Last edited by mtx; 26th May 2008 at 08:30 PM. Reason: text add
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Old 27th May 2008
cajunman4life cajunman4life is offline
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Doh! Thanks, I'll check it out.
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Old 27th May 2008
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Default Polemic Sendmail

I have been using sendmail for many years , it have had security issues , but not anymore (since 3 years ago) it is fast , easy to configure , lots of documentation , auth modules , ldap modules and it has many interesting features , supports also a big amount of traffic .

I have heard PostFix is great also , secure and very good i have NOT tried but i think is very good!!!

please let us know what you decided and why!!!!!
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Old 27th May 2008
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here is some comparison
http://shearer.org/MTA_Comparison

why nobody mention exim ( www.exim.org ) ) It is very powerfull multifunctional mail server. There is a plenty of documentation for it. For me it was a little hard to move from sendmail to it, but now I am completely satisfied with Exim.

Last edited by edhunter; 27th May 2008 at 09:13 AM.
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Old 27th May 2008
corey_james corey_james is offline
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I've never known anyone to choose to use exim. It seems the majority of exim users are debian users, not surprising since this is the default MTA
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Old 27th May 2008
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I'm also running exim and it is working great. Has all kind of nice options to filter mails. For spam filtering I recommend ASSP it works much better then SA and reduces the load significant.
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Old 27th May 2008
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I'll probably get flogged for this but take a look at Citadel if you want an easy one step, no hassle Collaboration suite. I like Zimbra as well but it doesn't run on *BSD. As a consultant, a good web interface (I didn't say GUI) is eesential. I Just don't have time to muck around remembering specific command when I can log into the web and fix it.

-Tim
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