RE: email questions

From: Kevin Miller <Kevin_Miller@ci.juneau.ak.us>
Date: Fri Jul 01 2005 - 07:44:14 AKDT

bob@estimations wrote:
> I'm toying with the idea of setting up an email server for a small
> business (about 10 employees). Email is currently being provided by
> a remote webhost. The webhost has
>
> I have a number of questions I'm hoping I can get some feedback on.
>
> First of all, should I do it? What are the risks and/or rewards? I'm
> thinking that the primary risk is that I don't know what I'm doing,
> so may leave some security holes open in the installation, and that
> it might be a hassle to maintain. But I'm thinking that the primary
> reward is that I can more easily filter incoming mail, intercept spam
> at the server, etc.
>
> Secondly, if I *do* try it, what is a good package? I've been looking
> at qmail, and even found a couple of installation howto's that look
> like something I could do. e.g.
>
> http://www.flounder.net/qmail/qmail-howto.html
> http://www.qmailrocks.org/
>
> Does anyone have experience with qmail and/or others that they may
> like better? Also, any recommendations on spam killer applications?
>
> Thanks in advance,

Haven't used qmail, but take a look at MailScanner:
http://www.mailscanner.info

It can interface with multiple MTAs (Sendmail, Exim, Postfix, Qmail) and
antivirus packages, is pretty straight forward to set up, has *great*
support (very active mailing list) and if you're so inclined you can get a
commercial build called SMGateway from http://www.fsl.com/products/.
There's also a very worthwhile add-on to MailScanner called MailWatch for
MailScanner: http://mailwatch.sourceforge.net/ which adds some web
management functionality.

If t'were me, I'd pull it down, install it on a test server, create MX
records for mxtest.mydomain.com and start routing some messages through it.
That way, your regular mail will continue to go where it currently is so
there's no risk and you can pump all the messages through it that you like
while you need to test.

When you're comfortable with it, reconfigure your DNS to point to it and
you're in the email admin business!

...Kevin

-- 
Kevin Miller                Registered Linux User No: 307357
CBJ MIS Dept.               Network Systems Admin., Mail Admin.
155 South Seward Street     ph: (907) 586-0242
Juneau, Alaska 99801        fax: (907 586-4500
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Received on Fri Jul 1 07:39:18 2005

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Fri Jul 01 2005 - 07:39:18 AKDT