Mail Server ?

Hello everyone

I have been learning a lot about the exiting word of Linux BUT SADLY I still know very little.
We have an external mail server that sends us only POP 3 type of emails and we are not able to block them from our gateway security as I understand only SMTP type can be blocked and POP 3 and IMAP can only be marked. We have no control over this mail server. Lately we have been receiving a lot of SPAM and this is quite frustrating.. Failing to find any other way out we are thinking of having our own mail server ( Say through a DMZ port ).

We do not know how to do it.. We have SUSE 10.3 (would be upgrading to SUSE 11 beta soon) Can someone guide us how to do it ? Or at least suggest us a path of how to start ?? Like Are there some special software required or do we need some special configurations in the SUSE ??

Thanks for any possible help..

Ron

http://en.opensuse.org/Mail_server_HOWTO try here to start.

I've seen recommendations for Fetchmail, Sendmail and Dovecot I struggled with Fetchmail a little and found postfix a little easier.

iirc postfix is installed by default.

http://en.opensuse.org/Mail_server_HOWTO try here to start.

I've seen recommendations for Fetchmail, Sendmail and Dovecot I struggled with Fetchmail a little and found postfix a little easier.

iirc postfix is installed by default.
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Thanks FM,

I have started my work on it. But I fail to understand how will the mail get routed to our own mail server. Do we need a domain to be rgistered ? If yes then do we also need to host a website on our mail server a well. (we already have a web site hosted on an external web hosting server).

I am a little confused person.may be a few answers could enlighten me..
Thanks everyone

Ron

I'll try hopefully someone else can help.

In regards to domain, I also struggled but this is a toy server using a dynamic ip and free domain. Now you need the domain registrar records to point to the mail server.

This is the mx record, from what I could work out this isn't necessary if the mail server is the same domain. Being a toy server I didn't really go further as with the free account from what I could work out I wasn't able to add a MX record plus the dynamic ip threw a little more in there. I think you may need to add a mx record to point to the mail server you're setting up.

I suspect you're web hosting service maybe able to assist more with the MX record than I.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help but I really did struggle myself with this. Also I used another distro and webmin to set up, so can't really transpose the commands to yast.

Hopefully someone else can assist further. All I can say I found it was a lot telneting to begin with

dig will assist in getting the MX records back for a domain. But iirc this may take a little while to filter down.

use fetchmail to re-direct mail from main mail server
unlimited size with speed postfix/cyrus. Long time ago I did manual for for such setup on BSD with filters, virus scanning, backup servers and so on.
this should be available at bsdforums. Though it is few yrs old.

I would suggest static ip for server.

I think I get what you're saying Broch but just to clarify to help Ron Chandy

As they have a external web hosting server you're suggesting to use fetchmail to redirect on the web hosting server, over using the MX record?

Only really asking because I have only recently done this and did get confused myself too.

correct (I thought that he wants to pull mail from main server), fake highest MX records and fake lowest MX records will help with spam filtering. I did not read original post carefully which states that they want only spam filtering.
However MX policy will not stop spam completely so you would use postfix anti-spam filters, definitely add spamassasin with Razor

Thanks FM,broch,

That was informative to me.

The problem with our external mail server is that it sends in only POP3 type of emals. and we need that we get SMTP type. By this we can block spam at our gateway before it reaches the internal network.

So I was thinking of having our own mail server, But If there is another way out we are willing to try. To use fetchmail we may have to request our web hosters to do it for us at the main server (Which I doubt they would do..)

Any suggestions ??

Thanks again

Ron

Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

It's likely the external mail server is using smtp, this then needs something else on top for pop/imap here I used dovecot to use pop3.

As for solutions I see the 2 you set up the mail server and make sure the MX record points to your mailserver, or as broch suggested the external mail server relays/redirects to you. Then maybe a 3rd, with no knowledge of how, perhaps there is a better way of filtering pop3(Shrug)

But honestly I really did struggle with the multitude of options and ways, and really am not to keen on giving advice. I've only done it once on a toy server and honestly it is not something I intend to repeat again in a hurry. I stopped chuffed with myself when the domain could send and receive emails, and I could access them with pop

Seems that fetchmail is causing a few issues in terms of how it works, let me try to explain.

Fetchmail works like a normal email client, in that it can log on to remote mail servers, pick up, delete mail and so on from the mail box.
You configure it to pick up mail from a remote box and direct the mail to a local mailbox on your own server, at which point local users can log in and read their mail directly from the local server rather than them needing to collect it themselves from the remote account(s).

Benefits for this method are, you aren't limited by protocols on the original remote server, example you can pop the emails from the remote to your own server and set up your own server as an IMAP server for your users to connect to, thereby centralising email history.

You're not restricted by the remote service providers mail box size limits.

Backing up complete email history or migrating to new servers is simply a case of copying the mail boxes from the old to the backup location or new server.

Multiple original mailboxes can be redirected to a single local mailbox account.

Once the mail is on your own server you can spam filter using any number of methods.



Sending mail doesn't require a dns record either, you can send your mail to your own server's local outbox and have it then post the mail to the usual remote server where it will get its usual legitimate mail header information, but leave you again with a complete outgoing history with no size limits.

Hope that clarifies the fetchmail thing a little, if you want an example config file if it helps just shout.

Eds