[Techtalk] Way to not organise a mail server

[Ricardo Dalceno]

Hi Anne,

Use the /home/<insert username here>/Maildir (if your MUA supports Maildir)
or /home/<insert username here>/.mbox. Its easier then sharing
/var/mail/whatever.
But, IMHO, the best way is setting up an IMAP server like courier-imap. The
mail still resides on the server in the users home directory, but you dont
need to a share (NFS or Samba) to get your mailsystem working. It's more
secure and provides more features.
BTW, if you are going to use some kindo of SMTP server too, I recomend using
Postfix. Easier to configure, very robust, well documented and it has a lot
of HOWTO's (google for it) that you can use to integrate it with Anti-Virus
and/or Anti-Spam systems.

Good luck ;-)

Ricardo 'j0k3r' Dalceno

2009/1/19 Anne Wainwright <anotheranne at fables.co.za>

> Hi,
>
> As you will know from other trouble-related posts I have got a ubuntu
> server up and running.
>
> Now on the email side, the MUA/MTA/MDA terminology was a bit confusing with
> some of them doing more than one thing, but how I organised it was thus:
>
> postfix to send the mail to my adsl-allowed smtp server
> mpop to get the mail from my isp's mail server
>
> then I got sucked in and installed dovecot as a pop3 server so the mail
> could again be pop'd by my network machines from my ubuntu server.
>
> Not the way it runs on my current office window setup. There I have Mercury
> Mail Server (sends and collects mail, all in one). But the difference is
> that it puts the mail in user mailboxes on the server and with the network
> up then any instance of the MUA (Pegasus) just connects across the network
> to its mailbox withut the need for a pop.
>
> So I have unnecessarily complicated matters with dovecot, although it works
> of course.
>
> Question. before I set this to rights, I suppose we have to have a share
> for each MUA to connect to. It could be a samba share for a windows m/c to
> connect & an NFS share for the day that I finally ditch windows. But a share
> is a share, and I need a share to connect, not like connecting to a pop
> server.
>
> I seem in my playing about to have created a good selection of mailboxes.
> Some in /home/anotheranne and then some in /var/mail/  - what goes in there?
> When I get it all simplified, should the MUAs be collecting from /var/mail/
> mailboxes or /home/anotheranne mailboxes?
>
> --
> so much to do, so little time :(
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