> *BIND
I use BIND to host my DNS. BIND has an interesting track record and a
lot of the things you hear (both good and bad) apply to versions 4.9 and
8. 9 is a whole different thing (with it's own good and badness). All
the nameservers have their pros and cons. You could alternatively look
at PowerDNS or djbdns. I'm sure there are others as well.
In the first instance I'd recommend using your registrar's servers for
your domain (say, example.net) and then delegating a subdomain to your
server for messing around with (say, fiddling.example.net). If you can
do that then you're half of the way there as far as infrastructure
(deploying nameservers, delegation points, glue, caching, slaves, AXFR,
IXFR, administrivia, etc) goes and you haven't broken anything for your
main domain.
As well as infrastructure you've got to consider the names themselves.
For delegation you'll need to understand NS and SOA records. In order to
give names to IP addresses you'll need to understand A records (ignore
IPv6 for now). In order to deploy mail you'll need to understand MX and
PTR records. If you want to deploy antispam measures such as SPF you'll
have to understand how they use TXT records.
You'll also want to understand TTL for both cachable results and
NXDOMAIN results.
Be familiar with the client side testing tools such as dig, host and
nslookup. You can get familiar with them on other peoples' domain and
then compare them to what your own domain produces. There are also
various "looking glass" and sanity checking services on the web that
will tell you interesting things about how your DNS appears to be
configured from their point of view.
You can deploy everything for your mail infrastructure without having to
deploy your own mailservers: your registrar's ones should be sufficient.
http://www.shonky.com/Docs/dns.txt
http://www.intodns.com/
http://dns.squish.net/
> *Incoming mail
For this I use exim.
The choice is usually between Sendmail, exim and postfix.
Sendmail is the grand-daddy of MTA software. Postfix and exim are both
mature replacements. I got on with exim because of its monolithic nature
and anti-spam promises. exim is a single binary and can have a single
configuration file. Postfix is split into several smaller tools and
often has a swathe of configuration files. In reality, anti-spam is
probably just as good with either but exim got there first and therefore
has the reputation as "the anti-spam MTA". Popular opinion amongst the
cool kids seems to be with Postfix, but I've never managed to ascertain
any solid reasons why. Lots of important people use exim (University of
Cambridge; where it was written, Debian and others).
Configuring MTAs is *hard*. They have thousands of knobs and they are
loads of different mail architectures to choose from.
The exim documentation is a reasonably good read if you start at the
beginning and have plenty of clues about the subject matter. You don't
need to read it all tho'.
Tony Finch at the University of Cambridge has a bunch of presentations
and example config files that are worth a look.
In the first instance I'd get something listening on port 25 and see if
you can encourage it to forward mail to, say, a gmail address or
something. That way you don't have to worry about mail storage, POP,
IMAP, etc. It's really important here to use a "proper" desktop mail
client to read the test messages: that way you can get a full "view
source" and can inspect the mail headers to work out what's happening
where. I managed to scrape through without too much other
instrumentation or traffic sniffing but it can be a bit hairy. Having a
sharp eye on /var/log/exim (tail -f /var/log/exim/*) is always worth it.
Adding anti-spam measures can be easily accomplished by hooking your
working MTA into the Bitfolk Spam Assassin service.
> *A POP3/IMAP server for my client.
For this I use Cyrus. Cyrus is "serious business" but I like it because
it's a completely "sealed" mailserver. It doesn't require UNIX accounts
for every user and it doesn't integrate tightly with the MTA: the MTA
delivers mail over a local mail protocol and so the two pieces of
software end up completely independent.
Other options are Dovecot, Courier and uwimap and traditional mbox /
Maildir spools.
Cyrus has traditionally had a reputation of being a bit of a pig to set
up. I set mine up in ~1996 and I've been happy with it ever since. I'm
not sure how it compares to other MSAs currently in use but when I
deployed one a few years ago it was fairly painless. Initially I used it
as a standalone store: I just set it up as another account in my mail
software and then dragged messages to it for archiving: my ISP provided
my main INBOX. Once you get to that stage you can teach your MTA how to
deliver mail to it directly.
Watch out for Cyrus SASL.
> *An SMTP server for my client to send to.
For this I use exim.
The whole idea of separating mail sumbission services from general
server-to-server mail transport services is relatively new. Running both
personalities in a single MTA config requires quite a bit of attention
to detail and can be quite annoying. Again, Tony Finch has some clues in
his config files.
If you choose exim for you submission service then it makes sense to
choose it for your incoming service as well. Ditto for postfix.
Alternatively you could use a dedicated submission agent such as msad
for your submission service and still use exim or postfix as your MTA.
You can find msad on
http://kitten-technologies.co.uk/
Running a submission service is all about fixing up the headers that
MUAs (Mail User Agents) produce incorrectly and adding the ones that
they fail to produce at all.
> *Webmail for on-the-road access to my mail. (my existing provider uses
> Open.Exchange and I like it but I'm also happy to consider other
> recommendations)
I chose roundcube for this because it looks snazzy and I thought that
the users would like it. It's a bit of a pig to configure as it's a PHP
app and therefore debugging options are limited. Once it's running then
it works reasonably well and can hook into your Mail Store and Mail
Submission agents. There are loads and loads of webmail projects out
there and they range in complexity from webmail only all the way up to
comprehensive webapp frameworks where the mail client is just a little
component.
In order to run webmail well you probably want to run a webserver with
SSL and paid-for certificates. I used self-signed certificates because
I'm cheap and it shows.
I hope that this has been useful and hasn't overwhelmed you. Let us know
how you get on an let me know if you have any other questions.
Good luck.
Regards,
@ndy
--
andyjpb@???
http://www.ashurst.eu.org/
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