[COLUG] Mail server advice

[Aaron Howard]

On Jan 22, 2008 11:38 PM, Tom Hanlon <tom at functionalmedia.com> wrote:
> 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.

When I got mine (and this was YEARS ago for RH 6.x-7.x) sendmail was
involved.  None of those other things you mentioned.  I hope they've
moved on to Postfix as it seems most everyone else has...but I don't
know what they're testing for anymore as I let all my certs expire
since they only served two purposes: (1) to get my foot in doors where
I might not otherwise; and, (2) to put a bunch of letters after my
name.

#2 is obviously unimportant.  #1 became less so when I realized I got
99-100% of my business from relationships I maintained with people and
the quality of the work I did.  The certs are good mostly if you are
pursuing opportunities with people who don't know you and/or have no
trustworthy references to vouch for you.

All that being said, I still liked getting my RHCE and was glad I did.
 I still say it's one of the most meaningful certs out there...behind
only CCIE and CISSP imho...and I'm not that sure because I never got
those two.

Also, I'll echo Angelo to an extent...I've setup a few mail servers
(actually one is just a front-end spam-catcher to an Exchange server)
using Postfix, MailScanner + SpamAssassin + ClamAV, SPF, Rules du
Jour, and MailWatch with great results.  It takes some rule tweaking
to get the scoring just right to catch all spam properly and you might
have to whitelist some folks who tend to send "spammy" e-mails or who
have AOL accounts; but it works really well after a few weeks.

Then again, I hear grey-listing works wonders and have considered
implementing it on a few systems.  If I were setting up a new system,
I'd probably add that to the mix.

One last thing: yes, I think mail config can be a lot of fun.
Frustrating, but fun.  Stay away from sendmail.  It's a great MTA but
there are great MTAs out there that don't require a PhD in quantum
theory to understand their configuration.

Now go have fun.

-Aaron