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Separate Mail server
Hi guys 
I just switched from Shared hosting from HTN to a 128mb VPS server I grabbed from a deal here. Now Im stumped, no doubt
I already had the web server up (after 5 hours of reading) it's a lamp server. Now back from my old host, they had cpanel that made things uber easy. My problem now is how do I setup my own mail server. Yes, it's a big problem for me 
I did some stuffs with dns records on my domain, please take a look if theyre alright
A records
.mydomain.com 3600 my.ip.add.here
www.mydomain.com 3600 my.ip.add.here
mail.mydomain.com 3600 another.ip.add.here <-- im thinking of setting up a separate mail server (yes, I bought 2 servers just to be sure) since the web server is only 128 mb and i dont wanna stress it out. another thing is I dont wanna mess up my web server's configuration. I worked so hard for that LOL
am i on the right track?
no CNAME records for me, I wonder if that's weird for everyone here (?)
now here's my MX records
*.mydomain.com 3600 10 mail.mydomain.com
.mydomain.com 3600 10 mail.mydomain.com
are those proper/correct?
Ill be lucky if I made those right, the guides I found on the web are hard to follow for real, nothing newbie friendly.
Now another problem for me is what program to use for my mail server, on some forum I found out about Dovecot, but I wonder if that's easy to setup. Or maybe linux' sendmail is enough for me? Anyone?
Thanks guys and have a merry christmas!
Comments
You could try this guide: http://www.debianadmin.com/debian-mail-server-setup-with-postfix-dovecot-sasl-squirrel-mail.html
I haven't actually set up a mail server in years, I stick to Google Apps.
that might be a better alternative though Im not familiar with the limitations
EDIT: OT: OpenStatus is really cool! I am looking for such a tool
I can only recommend that too!
Better use the 2nd server you bought for Backup or Load balancing or whatever and just use Google Apps for Mail sending. You might need sSMTP for relaying the emails tho (just gogle for "ssmtp google apps")
On a side note, a LAMP stack is not optimal for a 128mb VPS. You would be better of with nginx but its more difficult to set up and maintain.
Ok im reading about GA now
load balancing for what? lol sorry
web server? is that it? how do you do that?
just read about someone here using lnmp for a 128mb too, I think Ill give that a try!
Thanks for your suggestions!
There are multiple options
For example you can run the nginx on one server and MySQL on the other one (if they are in the sama data center).
Or you could run a Varnish cache on one of the servers and nginx+MySQL on the other one.
nginx + php-fpm + mysql is your best bet if you have low memory. There are plenty of tutorials available on the interwebs for this config. I'd recommend debian as apt-get is pretty powerfull & they have a nice social contract but well, what distro did you choose?
Anyway, have fun & welcome in the command line world
It always amazes me when otherwise technically-competent people immediately run to Mother Google when someone says the word "mailserver"
Use Postfix for mail delivery and Dovecot for POP/IMAP services.
If you'll have only a handful of email accounts, setup regular shell users (no, they don't have to have shell access) and forego any "virtual mail" setup.
Get the basics working, i.e., Postfix accepts mail for a domain and delivers it, Dovecot accepts your login and delivers mail to your client mail program.
Next you want spam protection. Postfix has some built-in feature you should investigate, and there are Realtime Blacklists (RBLs) to read about. Then for a LEB mailserver, look into a bayesian filter (I'd recommend SpamProbe). Set it up, train it with a few hundred spams and another few hundred hams (good messages) and watch it work.
And of course you want webmail. Use Roundcube. Install it once (so it accesses IMAP on "localhost"), on a subdomain like webmail.mymaindomain.com and have all users login there. This greatly reduces your maintenance work.
Or there's google.
Why wouldn;t we? DEspecially considering every question raised here is met with a link to google?
ive been hearing about it before but never bothered, i guess i should give that a try
got debian and lemp just as everyone said
speedy!
last line looks sweet
The choice is of course yours. If you are providing mail to other people, I'd suggest you make them aware of your choice so they understand how & where their email is managed.
We have...
Exim, Dovecot, Spamassasin, RBLs, Roundcube.
Works a treat!
Google Apps is great, but sometimes you want your mail to be your mail and not in the hands of someone else. Some businesses are the same, they don't particularly want to share their private individual conversations via email with Google. For the record, I do use Google Apps on some domains.
Works a treat!
Exim vs. Postfix is kinda like a distro argument, so I won't go there
Both are fine MTAs.
SpamAssassin is primarily rules-based filtering. Yes it does bayesian filtering also, but it seems most people using it don't do training, rather they just use it out-of-the-box. A well-trained bayesian filter is (IMO) much better than a set of rules. SpamProbe is also a C++ binary and is much faster and more memory efficient than SpamAssassin's perl. Important I think if you're on a LEB.
Just thoughts, not criticisms
Sometimes, you just want to save yourself the hassle of dealing with running your own mail server. Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. Actually, my number one reason for using Google Apps is the integration with Android. Email gets pushed to my phone, contacts and calendar events get synced, and whatnot. Sure, I could use IMAP or POP to connect to my mail server from my phone, but overall, it's just a pain in the ass to run a mail server. With Google Apps, I don't have to worry about setting up spam filtering, keeping it secure, etc etc.
heh We do. That's why we have ours on a pair of Quad Xeons.
Having said that, a good chunk of our spam is caught at the first check, against our in house RBL.
http://madspace2.rajeshprakash.com/lowendvpsconfig.htm
See Section 2.3
Disclaimer, that's my howto.
Disclaimer 2, I stopped using saslauthd, and started using Dovecot SASL (http://wiki.dovecot.org/HowTo/PostfixAndDovecotSASL)
Disclaimer 3, I haven't updated it in about 6 months but aside from Dovecot SASL, most of it is still in play.
Now it's clear for me that Ive got 2 options: g.a and diy mailserver. thanks guys yall did great help to me
hmm..just one last thought though: let's say i have a forum about a certain niche, whats more efficient to use of the 2? if that forum gets a dozen of registration per day, etc... How should I approach such choices?
awesome tutorial
just quoting a few lines from it:
"Holy cow, I’d have to do all of this work all again to setup the system AND rebuild all my sites/databases/email?!? I’m too much of an engineer to let that happen! Hmm … what do I need?"
fun and comprehensive, thanks for sharing!
windows live email too
I see nothing wrong with using a convenient, existing service from a reputable company when you don't feel the need to reinvent the wheel.
On a separate note, Google's outbound is also far, far less likely to be autoflagged as spam. For people that need to ensure their clients are receiving email (for say, invoicing), that's a huge load to not have to worry about.
The only times I've ever had an autoflagged-as-spam issue have involved hotmail and yahoo. Anyone using those services for business email should be taken outside and flogged IMO.
Why's that? Live offers full integration into their exchange services, I know my University e-mail goes through live (other Uni I've attended uses Google - me really likes). I imagine a lot of businesses do the same thing...
Microsoft Hosted Exchange/Managed Exchange is completely different from hotmail
Primarily because they set their own criteria for evaluating what is or isn't spam, and ignore the conventional criteria available to the masses, e.g. a clean IP and correctly implemented rDNS, SPF and DKIM.
Once, when facing this issue I did some tests. First I created new Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail accounts.
Then I composed an innocuous message about getting together next week for a meeting to review the report, etc., .etc. and sent it via my mailserver to each of those accounts.
Gmail: delivered it to the Inbox. I could view headers and see correct rDNS resolution, SPF: Pass and DKIM: pass.
Hotmail: put it in spam.
Yahoo: put it in spam.
Next I composed another message, using text from blatant spam messages I had on record -- really obvious stuff that I won't include here or this post will never make it.
I sent that message using my IPS's mailserver (a Bell partner). The result:
Gmail: put it in Spam
Hotmail: deliver it to the Inbox
Yahoo: delivered it to the Inbox
To be sure that wasn't a fluke, I repeated it twice more, with exactly the same result.
I could only conclude that Hotmail and Yahoo will accept anything from a Bell-network mailserver without further examination. I'd guess your university is on their blessed-senders list as well.
You could just setup a free hosting control panel on your vps (kloxo). Setting up a mailserver with kloxo is easy because like cpanel it is all included and only requires a few settings. It also makes it really easy to provide clients with mail hosting services. You can also use different web based clients.
My University's e-mail is actually hosted on their exchange servers, I was actually referring to:
The exchange services provided by live seemed pretty good, and I imagine a lot of businesses used it. I guess hotmail/live is different from their live exchange services?
Honestly I have no idea. Though I'd guess there is a difference.
I'm not doubting Microsoft's technical competence -- or Yahoo's for that matter. My gripe is that -- with their pubic-facing, free services -- they seem to use sender-whitelists (nothing really wrong with that), but if you're not on their whitelist then you're automatically on their spammer list -- and that's just plain wrong.
Guilty until proven innocent if you will. And they control absolutely the "proof".
I seem to recall both Hotmail and Yahoo blacklisted certain Bell systems previously "as a mistake". edit: (Forgot to type the rest of that sentence) I wonder if those addresses and IPs are now white listed.
Five seconds with google just pulls up people complaining about getting blocked so you'll have to forgive me for not giving links. Tight on time today.
Bell is different depending on where you are.
Here (in eastern Canada) we used to have regional mailservers. Now it's all centralized out of Toronto under something called rmgopenwave.com -- which I think might be a third-party to which our Bell has outsourced all mail delivery services.
http://www.openwave.com/products/messaging/email_mx/index.html
Running a mail server, or should I say a properly setup mail server isn't as easy as apt-get|yum- ing your favourite MTA and editing some .cnf files.
To ensure most mail will be delivered to most recipient inbox you also got to have the DKIM, SPF and whatnot working. Even should you got them working, some provider (namely Hotmail, based from experience) would still refuse to let your e-mail get passthrough.
Let alone monitoring your ip blacklist status.
So yes, +1 for Google Apps/Windows Live Domain.
The install of exim4 that gets installed with lowendscript is setup not to accept mail for example. At least it wasn't for me.