Advantages/Practical Use of a Home Mailserver?

[Nighthawk69]

Hi all...

I run RH 7.3 on my main box and I also have another RH 7.3 server in my home that serves as a full-time fileserver for the 3 other computers on my home LAN and once every few weeks it serves as a game server for LAN parties. Now, I have been fooling with setting up a mailserver on it because someone mentioned that it was 'kinda cool' and I had some free time. So, I setup fetchmail to automatically check my ISP email account for each user on my LAN every 5 minutes and download the mail for them. Then, I setup IMAP to run and I was then able to easily access the three email accounts for each puter on the LAN. But, my question is, what are the practical uses of this setup when I can simply setup each computer to go out the Internet and download mail from a POP3 account almost as fast as with it already downloaded on my server?

Suggestions? Is this a waste of time?

Thanks!

 

[MedicBob]

I think a mail server is a good idea. Unless you have an internet connection that can beat your LAN speed you should have seen a significant speed increase. Try it with large files.

Another benefit is the mail from 1 LAN computer to another never should goto the ISP mail server, yours should stop it and redirect it to the other LAN computer you are sending it to.

 

[Nighthawk69]

OK, cool. Yeah, it was pretty fast, and I see what you mean about with large files.

So, there is another component to setting up the mailserver other than fetchmail and IMAP? I would need to set something up that took mail my computers were sending and actually sent them off the ISP?

Also, what about spam and virus filtering? Is that possible on the server as well? If so, could I get some software suggestions and links to good info on setting them up?

Thanks!!

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Nighthawk69
OK, cool. Yeah, it was pretty fast, and I see what you mean about with large files.

So, there is another component to setting up the mailserver other than fetchmail and IMAP? I would need to set something up that took mail my computers were sending and actually sent them off the ISP?

Yup, sendmail can do that for ya, but sendmail is so terribly complex that I've never even tried (plus since I'm on a dialup connection it wouldn't be useful to me).

Also, what about spam and virus filtering? Is that possible on the server as well? If so, could I get some software suggestions and links to good info on setting them up?

Thanks!!

Yup, I'm sure it can be done, since some of the Linux gurus around here have mentioned doing exactly what you've done with spam filtering as well, but since I'm mail-server illiterate, I can't help you there.

 

[ProviaFan]

One other advantage of IMAP (if you know this already, go ahead and skip this post ) is that the mail is stored on the server. You can check your mail on any machine, and any new mail that "downloads" is not stuck on that machine; you can go to another machine, log in to the same mail account, and see the same messages.

 

[Nighthawk69]

Yeah, I like that part of IMAP--really cool! Also saves some HDD space.... and ya know what? I just thought of this... that would mean that any viruses in email would probably not affect the Windows users that are grabbing their mail as it is not actually on their computer and cannot be executed automatically or anything... maybe I'm wrong, but I run virus scanners on my Windows boxes anyway

But back on topic. I'd like get more information from people who run mailservers at home and do what I want to do with this one...

 

[TonyRic]

I have run my own domain (ournuthut.net) since Nov 2000 on my DSL line), and would never go back. I love being able to run my own web site without having to pay someone else to host it. Also, I have run my own mail server with WebMail, pop and imap access and use postfix as my MTA. I provide my Wife, her Mother, her nieces and my parents and her son with private mailboxes. I let the clients handle all virus protection and in webmail I use spamassassin and I get almost no spam while my wife gets alot. But, she only gets it when using Outlook as spamassassin is in my webmail program (Squirrelmail).

If you have any questions, let me know.

 

[Buddha Bart]

you'll need an MTA to be a true mailserver. There's basically three choices

sendmail (the standard, but has a repuation as the most complex program in unixdom)
qmail (a risingly popular alternative, many consider simpler and more secure than sendmail)
postfix (another less popular MTA)

Combined with a properly set MX record (dns) you can get you@yourdomain.tld to go straight to your server.
Personally though, i've never considered a DSL/Cable connection reliable enough to make me email rely on it.

bart

 

[Kai4Linux]

Hehe i do the same, but i use dyndns since i do not have a static ip.

A question though, is tehre ANY possible way to get incoming e-mail if my ISP blocks port 25? Thanks

 

[TonyRic]

My DSL line is rock solid. One outtage in almost 2 years. Telocity Rocks. Static IP means NO PPPoE problems.

 

[Nighthawk69]

OK, I decided to go with postfix as my MTA and this will allow me to implement all kinds of anti-spam stuff now That's all that's left, as I will be sending outgoing mail from my computers directly to my ISP and my mailserver will only handle incoming mail in order to filter it, allow quick access to it, etc.

Thanks for the info everyone.

 

[Nighthawk69]

OK, I have everything setup but I have one problem remaining. Unfortunately, I think it might be difficult to quickly work on this on a forum, so maybe someone can contact me via ICQ (41613714) or AIM (Nighthawk69thVFS) when they have time... here is what I have setup:

Fetchmail grabs my mail off the POP3 account from my ISP
Postfix is setup
Procmail is setup to filter spam by itself and,
SpamAssassin is setup to filter spam (using Procmail)
IMAP is setup so my LAN users can access their email

Now, SpamAssassin is identifying spam correctly and tagging it, and I believe I have the code in the /etc/procmailrc file correct for it to move spam to a different directory for the user account that the mail is for, although it is not moving the mail to a different directory, it is all still sitting in the 'inbox' together with mail that is NOT spam. I am having a heck of a time finding where this problem stems, so if someone can help me out, please IM me or post here.... I would appreciate any help.

Thanks!!

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

i cant say much about using imap or pop3 or isp accounts along with your own mail setup, but like TonyRic, i have my own domain and run exim as the mail server on it. i *barely* use email, so its great. exim is very simple to set up, i like it alot. probably not very good for a complex setup, but great for me. i just use mutt to read my mail, and i never have received any spam. i only give this "real" email address to actual people, for registering for things, or anything that is remotely possible to spam me, i just use my yahoo mail, or myrealbox.com mail.

 

[Nighthawk69]

That's a good idea about giving out your _real_ email addy for legit people, but I run a website and I need much of the email that comes to my box but I still get tons of spam from people that rip-off my address from my publication and use it for that. Therefore, I would like to filter that junk out.

 

[Nighthawk69]

OK, I got it to put the email in a different mail folder, although it still is not doing it correctly. It appears to be leaving the full message in the 'inbox' and only copying the message header to the 'spam' folder. Any ideas?

 

[Nighthawk69]

OK, I think I found the problem--it appears to be some simple settings in my scripts.

NEW QUESTION: I have a bunch of rules that I want applied to all users of my mailserver, so I put those in /etc/procmailrc. Although, some users will want different sorting of mail, so I will need to put that in ~/.procmailrc, although my question is, will putting sorting commands in the ~/.procmailrc file for a user cause any problems by being executed, say, after the global /etc/procmailrc commands are executed? Maybe it works differently? Thanks!

 

[Nighthawk69]

Eeek, nevermind that one too. I need to do separate ~/.procmailrc files for my three users anyway.

Wow, I have asked and answered my own questions like five times now. I must be learning

Thanks for taking the time to read my babbling...