Production Mail Servers on Arch

Carlwill · 2009-11-20 20:06:15

Just wondering if anyone on this board built / manages a production (or personal) email server running on Arch Linux. I am curious what you used as the MTA and some details about your build. If you have any feedback - please post it here as I am planning on doing so on my system soon.

Thanks!

fukawi2 · 2009-11-20 21:23:33

I run a production server on Arch, and have built a PoC system for work, but was forced to use Fedora 12 instead as the O/S.

I use Postfix as the MTA and LDA, with courier-imap for POP3 and IMAP access. PostgreSQL as a database backend for domains, account and aliases. Cyrus-sasl for SMTP auth. Postfixadmin for web GUI admin. Hasn't missed a beat in the 9 months or so it's been running.

My new production system for work on F12 had to have dovecot for the POP3 and IMAP access because for some reason Fedora don't package courier and the boss doesn't want to have to be manually compiling stuff for upgrades :s Dovecot was a right royal pain in the ass to setup compared to courier, but it did work as a slot in replacement pretty well once I killed SELinux so maybe Dovecot wasn't as bad as I thought.

kermana · 2009-11-20 21:26:13

Hey,

I run a personal mail server with only very few accounts on it. I use postfix + dovecot + spamassasin. I store mails in Maildir not in mysql. (Well if I was to configure again from scratch I would probably go with mysql tough.) I have been running this for at last 6 months and all seems good. I can post some of the config files if you want.

Also Networking, Server, and Protection section looks like a better place for this post

crouse · 2009-11-21 01:25:29

archlinux.me ........... postfix.

Carlwill · 2009-11-23 15:23:52

I am going to build a production mail server for about 100+ users on my domain and was only considering Postfix since I have used it before and love it. It's so straight forward and rock solid over anything else I have seen or used. My question is when I search the Wiki or other guides for building a Postfix mail server on Arch, I get a tutorial that explains how to do this with MySQL support. I have never done any kind of mail server with a database engine. Normally I would simply just dump all the users email into their home directory via Maildir method. My question is how difficult is it to build Postfix and have it working with MySQL over just doing a vanilla Maildir style installation. Are their benefits to using MySQL over the simplistic way I am use to doing it? I am assuming the setup and configuration process is a bit more complex but I decided I would ask here for your input / suggestions.

- Postfix
- MySQL
- Dovecot
- Roundcube (Webmail)
- Cyrus SASL (SMTP Auth)
- Clamav
- Spamassassin
- Postgrey
- Amavisd-new (very strange that this is only in AUR)

kermana · 2009-11-23 15:45:36

Well, if you check the http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pos … mysql_user you will see that only user information is stored in the mysql. In the wiki it says use "home_mailbox = Maildir/" and creates a user "vmailer" to store all the mails. What I did with my "old" setup was to create a user for each account on the box without login permissions. Turned out to be a big hassle. So i just switched to mysql yesterday. Wasn't too hard really.

Long story short, From what I understand, mysql just serves as a place to store user info/pass and all mails are stored under a dummy user named vmailer. I am sure somone will correct me if I'm wrong.

Last edited by kermana (2009-11-23 15:47:46)

kgas · 2009-11-23 16:59:52

Once I read this on howtoforge. This may help you.

Carlwill · 2009-12-02 01:44:21

Do you guys all use SpamAssassin on your mail server? I recall reading that the Amavisd-new daemon uses the modules from 'spamd' (SpamAssassin) however does not require the actual 'spamd' daemon to be running. This was the case on the CentOS / RHEL mail server...does anyone know if that is the same case in scenario for Arch? I would think that this would save system resources if Amavisd-new can simply use the modules from spamd...

Thanks for any info on this...

Arch Linux

#1 2009-11-20 20:06:15

Production Mail Servers on Arch

#2 2009-11-20 21:23:33

Re: Production Mail Servers on Arch

#3 2009-11-20 21:26:13

Re: Production Mail Servers on Arch

#4 2009-11-21 01:25:29

Re: Production Mail Servers on Arch

#5 2009-11-23 15:23:52

Re: Production Mail Servers on Arch

#6 2009-11-23 15:45:36

Re: Production Mail Servers on Arch

#7 2009-11-23 16:59:52

Re: Production Mail Servers on Arch

#8 2009-12-02 01:44:21

Re: Production Mail Servers on Arch

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