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#1 2005-05-25 21:51:04

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

which mail agent do you use?

a while back we had "what http daemon" and "what ftp daemon" do-you-use posts...

so I'm curious about mail agents... qmail? exim? the dreaded sendmail?

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#2 2005-05-25 21:56:45

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: which mail agent do you use?

Squirrelmail. ;-)

The server hosting my mail uses Exim though, according to the mail headers.

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#3 2005-05-25 22:06:31

topito
Member
From: Catalonia
Registered: 2004-03-25
Posts: 118
Website

Re: which mail agent do you use?

postfix here and also squirrelmail to check my mail when im at work big_smile

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#4 2005-05-25 22:10:50

soloport
Member
Registered: 2005-03-01
Posts: 442

Re: which mail agent do you use?

Uh... Where's the poll?

(exim, BTW...  Oh, and I think phrakture was asking about agents, not clients)

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#5 2005-05-25 22:13:40

i3839
Member
Registered: 2004-02-04
Posts: 1,185

Re: which mail agent do you use?

(I know he asked about agents, but as I only use Squirelmail I don't need an agent. So replace it with "none" if you like.)

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#6 2005-05-25 22:21:34

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: which mail agent do you use?

soloport wrote:

Uh... Where's the poll?

meh, there ya go...
I didn't want a poll because I wanted a discussion instead of people just voting and not saying anything.....

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#7 2005-05-25 22:42:39

cactus
Taco Eater
From: t͈̫̹ͨa͖͕͎̱͈ͨ͆ć̥̖̝o̫̫̼s͈̭̱̞͍̃!̰
Registered: 2004-05-25
Posts: 4,622
Website

Re: which mail agent do you use?

I used to use postfix, but I read an interesting article about exim in a linux rag recently..so I might start fiddling around with that.


"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

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#8 2005-05-25 22:50:09

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: which mail agent do you use?

cactus wrote:

I used to use postfix, but I read an interesting article about exim in a linux rag recently..so I might start fiddling around with that.

that's kinda where I am... I used top run postfix, but I've been looking into other options... for the hell of it (retchmail is kinda cool, too bad it requires and existing MTA)

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#9 2005-05-26 00:43:28

soloport
Member
Registered: 2005-03-01
Posts: 442

Re: which mail agent do you use?

On Red Hat products I like to use Sendmail (I don't know why... Red Hat makes it convenient and it's what I cut my teeth on)

On Arch I like to use Exim.

Come to think of it, I now find myself in a strange situation where... Well, you know how some people lament, "I use Linux at home, but at work they force me to use Windows"?  Seems like I've been phase-shifted over one notch: I use Arch everywhere I can get away with it, but some clients have insisted I use only Red Hat for their installs (and I don't use Windows anywhere).  I just realized that.

So goes the way of the meme...

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#10 2005-05-26 11:23:05

neri
Forum Fellow
From: Victoria, Canada
Registered: 2003-05-04
Posts: 553

Re: which mail agent do you use?

Hi,

You forgot courier-mta which I use on my server, on oridinary workboxes
it's esmtp which relays my smtp stuff.

-neri

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#11 2005-05-27 09:29:20

iphitus
Forum Fellow
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: which mail agent do you use?

i use msmtp

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#12 2005-05-29 15:35:13

FUBAR
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2004-12-08
Posts: 1,029
Website

Re: which mail agent do you use?

So which one is the best? :evil: I used to run the "QMail rocks"-package on my server but I never really used it a lot since most mails got bounced for some strange reason. When I'm done with my exams, I'd like to run a mailserver again tho. Any suggestions?


A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk I have a workstation.

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#13 2005-05-29 17:09:56

neri
Forum Fellow
From: Victoria, Canada
Registered: 2003-05-04
Posts: 553

Re: which mail agent do you use?

FUBAR wrote:

So which one is the best? :evil: I used to run the "QMail rocks"-package on my server but I never really used it a lot since most mails got bounced for some strange reason. When I'm done with my exams, I'd like to run a mailserver again tho. Any suggestions?

Woah, MTA-wars are the second in line, right after editor wars wink
So, I say Courier-MTA, cuz it is a nice all in one solution that can also scale
very well. It brings all necessary services with it. But you can run only
those which you need/like. You can have all the authentification
POP/IMAP/SMTP against one datasource without pulling in other stuff like
cyrus-sasl or recompiling packages for **SQL support. Also vmail-setups
are supported out of the box. It brings it's own MDA but also cooperates
nicely with procmail.

Since any MTA configuration is never a trivial thing, I wrote a wiki for it. (long !!)
http://wiki2.archlinux.org/index.php/CourierMta

-neri

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#14 2005-05-30 10:53:48

lanrat
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2003-10-28
Posts: 1,274

Re: which mail agent do you use?

Courier-MTA (as a whole set of programs) is most complete which means you don't have much work finding other elements for your mail server. They are already there and work together very well. The minus is the lack of practical documentation (comparing to other MTAs) and some kind of orthodoxy in implementation (some people think it's not practical).

Exim is also a very good and well designed MTA with nice and easy to read docs.

Postfix does not look so orderly but it's probably the most configurable. The docs are a bit spread over the web but the amount of guides and howtos is probably the highiest among all big 3 MTAs (check out some MTA mailing lists - it's probably most popular MTA so naturally most weird config has already been tried by someone).

Most if not all of the typical tasks can be done using any of the above.

If this is your first MTA and you want a simple setup and at the same time you don't want to spend time on searching and tweaking components of a mail server (POP, IMAP, webmail etc.) choose Courier-MTA. Courier-MTA is probably the least popular among the big 3 MTAs (but not because of its quality).

If you need more from MTA and want good examples of working configs but your setup is not very complex and you are not the type of person who likes to write lots of scripts choose Exim.

If you want some special configuration, tons of examples and docs and have time to dig in it and customize to your needs (in other words you want it as flexible as possible), choose postfix. Postfix is very often a choice of internet providers.

The above is only my opionion based on my experience and is only an advise for fubar (so don't flame! I'm burnproof :-))

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#15 2005-05-31 10:13:52

FUBAR
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2004-12-08
Posts: 1,029
Website

Re: which mail agent do you use?

I always thought a mailserver was "like" any other server: you just set up the the thing and then you can connect to it with a client and it works. But I've come to understand a mailserver is actually a set of smaller programs.

What I'm actually aiming for is a setup that handles incoming mail for my domain, fetches mail from my other free POP3-mailboxes periodically, removes the spam and viruses and then let's me fetch the mail through POP3 or IMAP.

I need several programs to set that up, don't I?


A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk I have a workstation.

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#16 2005-05-31 10:54:54

Moo-Crumpus
Member
From: Hessen / Germany
Registered: 2003-12-01
Posts: 1,487

Re: which mail agent do you use?

Still looking for what could be my personal environment. I want to fetch and deliver mails to and from my own personal mail accounts, and thats it, beneath some spam and virus filter actions. Suggestions?


Frumpus addict
[mu'.krum.pus], [frum.pus]

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#17 2005-05-31 11:12:19

neri
Forum Fellow
From: Victoria, Canada
Registered: 2003-05-04
Posts: 553

Re: which mail agent do you use?

FUBAR wrote:

I always thought a mailserver was "like" any other server: you just set up the the thing and then you can connect to it with a client and it works. But I've come to understand a mailserver is actually a set of smaller programs.

What I'm actually aiming for is a setup that handles incoming mail for my domain, fetches mail from my other free POP3-mailboxes periodically, removes the spam and viruses and then let's me fetch the mail through POP3 or IMAP.

I need several programs to set that up, don't I?

You won't *need* an MTA for that. So what does it take: Note that the named
programs are just examples, well actually the prolly most populöar for that task:
fetchmail - pull the mail from your other POP3 Acoounts
procmail - takes the mails from fetchmail and sort them according to rules
you have to define. These rules usually include external helpers such as
clamav and spamassassin. From here the mails are stored into several
folders/mboxes/maildirs - whatever you prefer.
imap/pop3 server: this server connects pop3/imap request from your mail programm with the folders/mboxes/maildirs where procmail has sorted the mails to.

Suggestion: Set up a mutt environment for your personal mailer. You don't
have to switch to that mailer, but in the process of setting it up you will
learn a lot about how this stuff works. And for this kind of setup there are some nice tutorials out there.

-neri

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#18 2005-05-31 13:46:02

lanrat
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2003-10-28
Posts: 1,274

Re: which mail agent do you use?

@neri, yes but you still need some smtp server with this kind of setup. Using some external smtp server can also save you time, trouble and bandwidth for filtering spam and viruses (because it can have it already). But if you want to learn something new and/or have everything under control I'd suggest using MTA.

Anyway, you'll need several programs to do that. It would be pointless to discuss all combinantions since there are already zillions of howtos available on the net.
I'd suggest tweaking the following google query to find a perfect solution for you guys:

If you decide to use MTA it would be even better to go to your MTA of choice official web page and start there.

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