[Techtalk] Way to not organise a mail server

[Maria McKinley]

Ricardo Dalceno wrote:
> 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
> 

My two cents:

I would actually recommend not using the /home/<insert username 
here>/Maildir because the last thing you want to do is try to 
reconstruct mailboxes or mail folders that a user has decided to muck 
about with. If it is in /var/ they will only see it from their mail 
client, not when they are logged into their home directory. I use cyrus 
(I use imap rather than pop), so my mail is in /var/cyrus/mail. I would 
agree that IMAP is much better than POP for most things, unless you are 
very limited on space for mail on your server. Finally, I agree with 
Posfix over Exim. I looked at both when I set up my mail server, and 
definitely felt like postfix would be easier to set up and easier to 
maintain. Good luck. Mail servers are not at all easy to set up, but 
once you get things going, you don't have to do too much.

cheers,
maria