Mail Server Software

[etali]

I'm using postfix and dovecot for my Ubuntu mail server at the moment, but I've found that it's a bit of a memory hog. Can anyone recommend other solutions? I'm after something easy to administer via the command line, lightweight, and easy to set up spam filtering for.

Thanks in advance.

[phillw]

Ubuntu + Postfix + Courier IMAP + MySQL + Amavisd-new + SpamAssassin + ClamAV + SASL + TLS + SquirrelMail + Postgrey

Is Quite a heady mix for a mail-server that avoids spam, couple to this the requirement to keep other sections safe & you will have an overhead.

I guess it depends on which modules you feel that you don't need. The inclusion & setting them all up to talk to eachother is a bit of a pain, but you do get a pretty darn secure server.

Thankfully, the instructions are easy to follow & explain what each bit is doing & how they interact with eachother.

If you pop the bit in bold into a search engine - it should point you towards flurdy <dot> com.

I also put on shorewall for configuring up the software based firewall (aka iptables, etc) - again, clearly explained.

I'm nearly done configuring mine - I'll post back when I'm done.

Regards,

Phill.

[relapse]

Postfix and Dovecot are suppose to be some of the lighter weight mail servers. How much memory do you have available? You can't find something that uses less resources than those. Hell, even the big companies are switching to those two services because of reduced memory footprint.

[phillw]

Hi relapse,

I run my test rig on a laptop, 1GB RAM. Celeron M processor 440, 50GB Hard drive allocated to Ubuntu 9.04 and 1GB allocated to swap. :-) Even with the webserver s/ware and mail server s/ware & a full desktop (not server) environment - it wanders along with 500Mb RAM used and doesn't touch the swap area - So, the above suite seems to offer both a secure system & is very gentle with system resources !!
As i write this, I have my Firefox browser open, with 6 windows and pidgin open for IM. GIMP has a JPG in it, that' I'm about to spit out as a GIF and open-office has a spreadsheet with embedded photographs open. It'd be interesting to see how much over-head the desktop environment is causing - I'll wager it's the lions share !!

The tutorial for the installation was scary for me (I'm new to this server business !!) - I'd tried various web-min packages for the webserver & am very happy with webmin. Same with e-mail server suites - It's built from the bottom up with security in mind and once i get my domain finalised I'm looking forward to the final configuration on my test rig before it heads off to its permament home. I'll be setting up a 'back-up' server as the permanent home, so my laptop can take over when I am online & having a 'play'. Interesting times, all new territory for me !!

Regards,

Phill.

[don19]

Which control panel are you using?

[phillw]

Re: control panel. I use Webmin for the overview of the accounts I have set up on 'piglet' (My laptop) It's pretty powerful, although I haven't got my head around all of its features yet !!

Webmin is the place to go get it from.

As for the mail server stuff ... I'm waiting for my domain registration to be finalised (I need pesky things called MX records).

For general oversight of the MySQL databases I use phpMyAdmin - most servers provide this as part of the suite.

My hosting account will be with e-nom, simply because it is the provider of the Forum's owner account that I am part of the 'team' for & I can nag him when I get stuck !! - It uses Plesk as it's interface, although he did tell me I could choose what control panel I wanted.

e-nom are charging about 70USD per year - you get all the usual sub-domain & mail stuff. I think you're limited to 100 MySQL databases - but I can't see me needing that many, although a lot of hosts limit you to between 1 and 5, so do check - It's pretty important if you are 'playing' with mail-servers, general searches etc. 5 databases can very quickly become a real hinderence.


I've got the links to the various tutorials I've used, fell free to pop me an e-mail to phillw@.uk.vpolink.com & I'll pop them back for you.

It's a bit of brain-ache this setting up server stuff - but I've learnt loads !!

Phill.