[COLUG] Mail server advice

[Angelo McComis]

Tom, I'm in the same boat. I host a few dozen sites, and their mail.

These days, the spam problem is big enough that people, even some of the most propeller-headed ones, are giving in and sending the mx to Google, or they're forking out $ for a commercial solution.

I can give a list of the favorite ingredients for a reasonably decent mail kit:

Postfix 
MailScanner + SpamAssassin + ClamAV
Extra Perl modules to support SPF, DKIM
Extra helper apps: Fuzzy OCR, Rules du Jour, PolicyD, MailWatch (web gui to MailScanner)
Dovecot 
Webmin (web gui)

With my system that's based on the above, I get next to zero spams, with a equally accurate false positive record.

Other tools: amavisd-new, DSpam - I know others use these but I don't personally.

As for getting started, there are some very good cookbooks out there that take you from a finished default os build all the way to a working mail setup. I thinl the site is called howtoforge.com. There are some great tutorials there to get started.  Once you have that part going, I can help with the anti-spam part.

Angelo


-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Hanlon <tom at functionalmedia.com>

Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:38:45 
To:Central Group <colug432 at colug.net>
Subject: [COLUG] Mail server advice


Hi Colug,

I host websites for a few folks but I have avoided handling of email.

I am tempted to mess with email but I feel it might be a pain.

Spam , IMAP, SSL, POP and then security security security.

I really would be managing very little, it would be my own mail  
basically.

Instead of configuring it myself, I might just have , earthlink or  
Google, or register.com,  handle it. ?

Pros and Cons:

They get a lot more spam so there filters should have a handle on it.
Spam to their servers does not equal bandwidth on mine.

Cons:
I would like to get my RHCE cert this year and I assume passing  
knowledge of sendmail , postfix, Cyrus, Courrier, Dovecot and the  
like are involved.
Mail config does not seem to be alot of fun.
I currently have only one machine, I really should have a backup once  
I start handling mail.

So is email server config worth my effort? The exercise would be  
largely educational.

Other services that I have configured have been largely trouble free.  
Would my email be trouble free, or are there regular exploits?

--
Tom 
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