[colug-432] Fully Featured email server

[Mark Aufdencamp]

+1 on Postfix/Dovecot/Roundcube

I've utilized this for almost the last decade and have been very happy
with the virtualized domains feature.  A bit of a learning curve, but
well worth it.  I also run DKIM, DomainKeys,  proper reverse DNS
configuration, and SPF records.  This is super important these days for
your mail reputation and delivery.  This includes proper envelope sender
info for hosted domains.  I haven't had the need to utilize
SpamAssassin, as the the SpamHaus and SpamCop reverse lookups configured
in Postfix have pretty much handled my inbound spam issues.  I'd also
recommend the usage of MailDir rather than mbox format.  I have my own
Bash scripts to add virtual domains, mailboxes, aliases, and relays to
my configuration.

As an interesting side note, a couple years back I did a project with
some intense mail sending.  About 25,000 messages a night. (Yes,
confessing to a past sin of Spamming)  This required some thought on
queue management and bounce processing.  The application was in PHP
Cake.  We generated the messages from a Cake shell, as the web interface
would timeout. (Kind of obvious at that volume)  I re-wrote the Cake
Mail Component to utilize the PEAR MailQueue (MySQL Tables) and then a
few cron jobs to release a set volume of messages from the PHP MailQueue
to the Postfix queue.  (Postfix default queue size is 1,000 IIRC. 
Postfix was configured with low timeouts, for quick local bouncing.

I've caught bounces with Perl, PHP, and Rails code, but highly advise
NOT to do this, as it lends itself to denial of service on yourself when
a certain large VPS hosting provider annually places your IP address
back into the SpamHaus list.  Instead deliver bounces to IMAP mailbox's.
 Utilize Perl CPAN libs to process the bounces into a score table for
future list grooming.

A bit of a laugh for completion.  A certain huge university would relay
many of these messages to other mail providers without wrapping them in
an envelope sender.  I utilized this hole by adding their sending mail
server IP addresses to our own SPF records.

Hope that was worth the two cents:)

Mark Aufdencamp
Mark at Aufdencamp.com


> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [colug-432] Fully Featured email server
> From: Rob Funk <rfunk at funknet.net>
> Date: Tue, May 14, 2013 5:28 pm
> To: Central OH Linux User Group - 432xx <colug-432 at colug.net>
> 
> 
> On Monday, May 13, 2013 06:12:57 PM Mike Haun wrote:
> > I am needing to build an email server that runs on Linux.  I'd like to
> > have a full set of features, and most important, it has to be able to
> > send and receive securely.  I like open source solutions, but this is
> > not mandatory. I have not begun any research yet, but I wanted to put
> > this out on the list first to see if anyone had any recommendations. 
> 
> What counts as "full set of features"?
> 
> If you want to put together the pieces yourself, I recommend Postfix for 
> the SMTP server, and Dovecot for IMAP/POP3. If you want webmail too, 
> Roundcube is probably what you want, though I haven't had a chance to mess 
> with it yet. Oh, and Postfix Admin is a nice web interface for managing 
> domains and users, especially if you have multiple domains (but is still 
> very useful if you have just one domain).
> 
> Of course, then you'll want to add in Spamassassin and maybe ClamAV (less 
> necessary if you don't have Windows users). Amavisd-new can be useful to 
> connect those with the SMTP server, but I ended up dropping that in order 
> to save memory, instead connecting Postfix to proxsmtpd (to call 
> spamassassin's spamc) and clamsmtpd.
> 
> I think Dovecot has a "sieve" filter interface available now, but I haven't 
> looked into it lately.
> 
> The other major feature that people seem to want in a mail server is a 
> calendar, but I don't have a solution for that (other than using Google 
> Calendar). I don't entirely see the connection between email and calendar 
> anyway.
> 
> -- 
> Rob Funk <rfunk at funknet.net>
> http://funknet.net/rfunk
> 614-429-4328
> _______________________________________________
> colug-432 mailing list
> colug-432 at colug.net
> http://lists.colug.net/mailman/listinfo/colug-432