Hi guys,

I'm setting up my rather new VPS here and I want to set up email. I've configured a shorewall using this link http://www.cyberdogtech.com/firewalls/t ... hp?page=fw.

Then afterwards I set up email using this link http://library.linode.com/email/postfix ... an-5-lenny.
It took me around 3 times running back and forth over this link to make it work (or at least I think I made it work), and some other links provided by support (and friends) to make the email working.

Now, I'm setting up the email client (Mac's Mail) and I've successfully configured the Incoming to receive messages. I knew it was receiving by sending mail (using telnet) to send to self (admin@surescene.com) and also from sending from gmail to admin@surescene.com and I managed to get them all.

Now there are two things left for me to con-figure out. When I'm setting up Outgoing, I can't get it to work. It's only asking me for the "Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP)" and when I enter surescene.com and tried sending an email it gives me a message
-- Message --
Cannot send message using the server surescene.com:admin@surescene.com

Connections to the server “surescene.com” on the default ports timed out.

Select a different outgoing mail server from the list below or click Try Later to leave the message in your Outbox until it can be sent.

Sending from: Alec <admin@surescene.com>
-- End of Message --
and I don't get any feedback while tailing mail.log.

I also tried sending from my system which uses ruby. I first started with one on the server already and used this configs:

Mail.defaults do
delivery_method :smtp, {
:address => 'localhost',
:port => 25,
:domain => 'locahost.localdomain',
:user_name => 'admin@surescene.com',
:password => 'email_password',
:authentication => 'plain',
:enable_starttls_auto => true
}
end

and I when I try sending, I get this message on the logs:

Jun 23 16:08:57 li121-224 postfix/smtpd[11017]: connect from localhost[127.0.0.1]
Jun 23 16:08:57 li121-224 postfix/smtpd[11017]: lost connection after STARTTLS from localhost[127.0.0.1]
Jun 23 16:08:57 li121-224 postfix/smtpd[11017]: disconnect from localhost[127.0.0.1]

Thanks so much guys! Help is really much appreciated.
Alec

Can you connect via telnet? See http://www.rdpslides.com/webresources/FAQ00035.htm for the commands.

Also ask your self this question "Do I really need to host my own email service?" if the answer is no then visit here http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html

Thanks for the reply obs.

Yes I have done telnet using the VPS. I have tried this one actually http://www.webpan.com/Customers/Email/S ... t_Test.htm and sent one email to my gmail account.

Yes I think I have read that link as well on one of the posts here. It is this one right http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/nonprofit/index.html. Is this a free one? Or I think the one you gave me is different. What is the difference with using gmail or setting up one? My project is actually a start up right now but I would still want to be able to send/receive messages using a more professional email like admin@surescene.com rather than suresceneadmin@gmail.com.

Thanks!
Alec

Gmail Apps uses your own domain, the main restriction is the free (i.e. standard) edition is limited to 50 users or less.

They "sell it" as a club/family, etc type service, but I know of (and have done so myself) several small businesses that use it with no problems.

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

Worse case, set it up, give it a good test, and if it doesn't work, change to something else (email is very easy to move around, you're basically just changing DNS records for your domain).

That's the best thing about free/open source apps, you can really test/try them before passing them over for something that costs money.

Really? I could use my own domain? That's neat. Wondering though, what does "50 users or less" mean? Is it like say "admin@surescene.com" and "alec@surescene.com" means two users?

But what about sending from an application? Say a website I am making? Can I also use the gmail app to do that?

Maybe I'll check it out later, so far I've seen group, nonprofit and business links.

Also if it happens that I can use gmail to start off, would I need to delete and remove all the settings I made with the VPS (pertaining to the first post of this post)?

To answer your questions, yes you can use your own domain, I have clients using it successfully for a couple of years with no issues.

The 50 users is the number of inboxes, you can set up "mailing lists" which are aliases to accounts i.e.

You have address fred@domain.com and bob@domain.com which are inboxes, then you have support@domain.com which is forwarded to both fred and bob, you also have admin@domain.com which is only forwarded to bob. That means you have 2 users, even though you have 4 addresses.

Sending from an application, google msmtp.

You should delete your postfix settings an apt-get purge postfix courier will toast postfix & courier and the config files.

Thanks for that information obs. So having a nick is not counted as a user, that would actually be cool.

And I have deleted most of what has been installed on the first part of this link http://library.linode.com/email/postfix ... an-5-lenny but not everything like libsasl2-2 cause when I purge it, it says it needs to delete also curl and lighty and some stuff, so I just left them for now.