Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 12 Sep 1999 09:47:59 -0400
From:      "Francisco Reyes" <francisco@natserv.com>
To:        "David Scheidt" <dscheidt@enteract.com>
Cc:        "FreeBSd Chat list" <chat@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Running email servers from home the easy way.
Message-ID:  <199909121347.JAA27874@vulcan.addy.com>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, 12 Sep 1999 00:52:16 -0500 (CDT), David Scheidt wrote:

>> >What do you get over qmail, postfix or even plain ole sendmail,
>> 
>> Easy installation of a POP server, MTA and list server.
>> 
>POP:
>su - root
>cd /usr/ports/mail/popper
>make && make install
>sed s/^#pop3/pop3/ /etc/inetd.conf > /tmp/inetd.conf && mv /tmp/inetd.conf \
>    /etc/inetd.conf

If I had found those notes in the past I may have tried it.. :-)

>MTA: 
>sendmail works out of the box.  

Before I went to to look for a POP server and even before I
thought of chancing my MTA I had looked at sendmail. I bought
the sendmail book and printed all info I could find in sendmail
security, virtual email, etc... I thought I had all the
information I needed and was planning to use it. The one thing
that made me shy away from it was the thought of setting up
security properly.Even that I had printouts from sendmail.org
with all the different configurations, but it seemed a
challenge. The best option seemed to be pop before relay. 

When I downloaded Dmail to check the pop server I noticed it had
an MTA and decided to give it a try. Worst case I could run back
to sendmail. After Dmail was installed and I read how easy it
was to setup some minimun level of security I came to realize
that at least for my home box all I need is to limit by host and
this was practically trivial so I was very happy.


>cd /usr/ports/mail/majordomo
>make && make install
>configure it, which is a PIA, I admit.

List management was again something I wasn't looking for, but
when I saw it was there I will give it a try.

>Alternativly, go grab listar from www.listar.org.  It works quite nicely on
>*BSD.  (I plan on turning it into a port, just as soon as I figure that out.
>Is there a reference on how to do that? )

I didn't really needed a list manager, since my web provider
let's me have Majordomo and they will only charge like $10 per
list configuration and no monthly cost. I will look at Dlist and
if it is as easy to configure as the smtp/pop part of Dmail I
may use it for sending jokes to my friends, but not really have
any plans for anything more serious than that. In particular at
home I have a modem connection so it doesn't make sense to run
big lists.

>My home machines have zero users other than me.  The machine on my desk at
>work has two or three users, runs a group mailing list, and such.  All free
>software, 90% of which worked out of the box.  (I made popper and listar;
>total time invested: less than 2 hours.

..And that is why those software made sense to you. In my case I
had spent money and much more than 2 hours just reading up on
sendmail (in preparation of trying to use it) and about 2 hours
just searching dejanews for which pop server to use. The whole
dmail installation (not countain download which was about 15
minutes) was about 20 minutes.


>That's fine.  Most of what you get works out of the box,


The issue is "does it do what I want". Sendmail works out of the
box if you just want to pass mail, but once you want to have
some security built in and not have it too restrictive, but yet
secure.. and once you get into virtual email, etc.. then it
becomes a pain.

>The best solutions in this case are the open source ones.  There are
>certainly things that there are no good open source  solutions for, and in
>those cases, I will use a commerical product.  


The best solution is what one can get to work with the least
amount of time, does ALL you need and is either free or it's
cost is less than what it would cost in time to go with a
different solution.


>But for most people, it works out of the box on FreeBSD.  It appears that
>for the people that the free version  of dmail works for, will have the
>default sendmail setup work.

But I don't want default behavior. I want to do some virtual
names, and have some security.. The other thing I am going to
get from the company that makes Dmail is a web interface... And
yes I know there are free alternatives and I also have already
spent hours searching and reading all emails about it that I
bump into, but I am sure that It will be easier to go with their
solution. 


>qmail's big advantage is that it scales really well to multiple servers

So that is a feature that makes it an appropiate solution for
someone looking for scalability.Definitely not my case.

After all was said and done I still think that "for me" Dmail is
a good solution. I never claimed it was good for everybody, but
for some people it may prove just what the doctor ordered.



To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199909121347.JAA27874>