Email server setup

[Dellboy]

Hi geeks

I've just deployed a rails app for a company here on my own slice, and now I have to set up an email server for them. Since this is my first time doing this, I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions re. an easy way of doing this?... Can I just set it up easily using Mozilla thunderbird?, Is there an easy way to forward mail to gmail??.. or do I have to go through the whole hoopla of installing and configuring postfix on my slice, setting up an email database for multiple domains, etc.etc.

Was just wondering what is the easiest way around this, before I get my hands dirty... Smeggle, Tastes Like Chicken, and Thread Killer... looking in your direction

cheers in advance

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

I would stay away from postfix personally and use Exim instead, much easier to configure..

I'm not sure what Thunderbird has to do with it (it's a client, not a server) - but what you are looking to do is really easy in exim (I assume you want <user>@mydomain to go to <user>@gmail.com)? Exim default install should be able to handle this easily..

Assuming debian/ubuntu
apt-get install exim4 (answer all the questions sensibly).

Then
echo myname@gmail.com > ~/.forward
^^ you could script that to read users from /etc/passwd

PM me if you need a hand...

 

[Dellboy]

Thanks a lot

I'll keep it public... someone else might benefit that way

I'm going to stay away from /etc/passwd , simply because users won't be in there...

so, say I want to set up 2 email users... user1@domain.ie, user2@domain.ie... I install exim, and what then?

echo user1@domain.ie user1@gmail.com > ~/.forward
echo user2@domain.ie user2@gmail.com > ~/.forward

are those the right commands??... I'm assuming these are issued from the command line... which directory are they issued from?, or does it matter?

I'm also assuming that that DNS MX records need to be added

I have some handy articles on postfix, that's why I was asking about that as an option

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Those echo commands are only used for the forwarding and it doesn't matter where you execute them from (but you should get your head around what they are doing). You will need to set exim up so that it will handle mail for the domains required first (trivial enough) http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/140

at least 1 (preferably 2/3) MX records will need to be setup but you can do this wherever your DNS is held.

 

[Dellboy]

so the commands are correct?

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Yes, the commands are correct, but all they are doing is putting the text
user@domain user@gmail.com into the file /home/user/.forward

This only works assuming that you have a working MTA (exim/postfix, whatever)

 

[thread_killer]

I only use Postfix and Sendmail. I really like Postfix by the way. Pretty easy to install and setup, and it has pretty top documentation. I worked with it a lot before. Must have had about 30 of the fuckers - load balancing, multidomain, "mail stream splitting" ...

... I just made that term up there, but it's a great way to record multiple copies of everything coming in, in case you want to try out more than one spam filter on 'the same' mails, in order to figure out which one is the best. Doesn't work with the 'reputation' parts of the filters though, ofc.