Good day,

I hate when it comes down to this, but I've tried several times but have failed. I have dealt with Linux a lot over the years but still consider myself a n00b overall.

I am trying to setup my first mail server from scratch using Debian 4.0, in past VPS's this was automated through a control panel interface such as HSCOMPELTE.

Forget my failed tries, I don't even want to cover what I've accomplished so far, so all installs have been removed and I have reinstalled Debian 4.0 fresh. If someone could please walk me through setting up my server to send/receive email the proper way I would appreciate it.

First and foremost, I just want to be able to send/received so setting up a webmail client isn't important yet. So if we can get everything setup correctly to connect to my server using outlook or thunderbird I would consider this a success. Only Me and close friends will be using it so no need for anything fancy. I don't care if I use sendmail or postfix or any other app, I just need reasons why, for my reference.


Just as a note, I will be setting up MySQL, PHP and Apache later on.


So in summary, who can help me set up my mail server from a scratch Linode Debian 4.0 install?

Hi,

Not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for but I have used both of these tutorials at some point.

http://workaround.org/articles/ispmail-etch/

http://www.qmailrocks.org/

Both of these set-ups leave you with a sophisticated mail server dealing wih multiple domains etc. and are a lot easier to follow than they first appear.

Check these resources:
http://www.howtoforge.com/
http://technichristian.net/intro/index. ... tch-server

This is how I did mine. It may not be best practice, but it works.

http://www.linode.com/wiki/index.php/User:Kangaby

I have tried those steps, skipping non mail related steps like httpdlight.

I can not get this to work, all I want to be able to do is send/receive via pop/smtp and possibly add webmail later. This tutorial was having me setup SSL and everything, completely wrong direction.

mail.domain.net would be my incoming and outgoing mail server address, correct?




I don't see any mail related items, what am I missing?

I used to run exim, but have switched to using Google Apps For Your Domain. http://www.google.com/a/. It's great if all you want is to get e-mail on your domain working, but of course you don't learn much about Linux of e-mail servers in the process. Depends on your goals. There will be plenty to learn when you setup Apache / MySQL / etc later on :-)

Graham,

I am not that bad at Apache, MySQL, PHP. Ive developed websites for many years. Just completely clueless with mail servers and some DNS stuff.

I will check that out though, I atleast need to get working email for now.

Thanks!

Perhaps this will be of help...
(from thread:http://www.linode.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2699)

This looks like what you might have been searching for:
http://adminspotting.net/building-a-messaging-server note "Part Two - Setting Up Postfix"

_________________
BOFH excuse #299:
The data on your hard drive is out of balance.

I have set up Google apps and pointed my CNAME on Linode to the one specified by Google, only when I go to mail.triptoy.net it shows my main website in var/www instead of Google mail.

A check on ur dns shows that mail.triptoy.net does indeed point to triptoy.net
Are you sure that youve updated the cname properly?
And you are aware that dns takes a while to propergate though to the rest of the world from when you update it in the linode dns manager?

Cheers

_________________
ServerAdmin - www.our-lan.com
"Diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggy whilst looking for a really big stick"
"In my experiece, any attempt to make any system idiot proof will only challenge God to make a better idiot"

Here is a screenshot of my DNS manager.

mail ghs.google.com Default Edit Remove

although my A/AAA indicates...

mail 67.18.186.137 3600 (1 hour) Edit Remove

could this be the problem?

yep, that would certinaly do it. I imagine a names override cnames..

_________________
ServerAdmin - www.our-lan.com

"Diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggy whilst looking for a really big stick"

"In my experiece, any attempt to make any system idiot proof will only challenge God to make a better idiot"

You can't have an A record and CNAME record for the same entry; that just doesn't make sense. What will happen then is implementation specific. Nasal daemons are an option.

_________________
Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

You could try my tutorial again. It has lots of new stuff.

Also use this. This was the basis for my mail system. Nice and simple.
http://adminspotting.net/building-a-messaging-server