As long as you aren't needing to using postfix it might be worth a shot.
Oh, it also includes webmail.  It's pretty complete.

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 01:38:15PM -0700, Shawn Grover wrote:
> Thanks for the info Jeff.  I'm trying to build such a server, so this might
> be worth checking into.  I still don't have email working properly (after 4
> days of trying now) - SMTP (outgoing) works fine, POP3/IMAP (incoming)
> doesn't.  I was planning on contacting the Postfix mailing list to address
> the remaining issues, but if E-Smith can do what I need with little pain
> then I might be better off here.
> 
> Shawn
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeffrey Clement [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 11:21 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: (clug-talk) Mini-review of E-Smith Linux
> 
> 
> E-Smith was something brought up quite a bit back in the old days of
> Clug but hasn't been mentioned recently so I thought I would remind and
> also share some of my recent experiences with it.  (Before someone asks
> I'm not being paid for this I just really like the product)
> 
> First off the URLS:
>  http://www.e-smith.org/   (developer website -free version)
>  http://linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=13     (linux ISO has downloads)
> 
> E-Smith is a Linux distro that is indended for small company / personal
> network servers.  It's a simple canned RH7.3 based distro that includes
> a the following:
>  - SMTP server (uses qmail)
>  - POP3 / IMAP (with SSL I believe)
>  - HTTP (Apache with SSL and PHP)
>  - Samba
>  - Mac equivalent to Samba
>  - FTP 
>  - Backups (to tape or local machine)
>  - NAT
>  - SQUID (supports transparent proxy - this is really nifty!)
>  - LDAP (for local users, company can use for addressbook)
>  - DHCP
>  - SSH
>  - PPTP (I haven't tested this since my company firewall is blocking GRE
>    packets)
> 
> E-Smith is supported by a company called Mitel that is making money off
> supporting it.  Commercial users get a automatic security update
> installing tool.  Non-commercial users have to do it themselves by
> downloading the RPMS off their website and installing them (fairly easy
> anyways).
> 
> There are lots of contributed RPMS for the system that provide things
> like SpamAssassin plugged into QMail, procmail, squid filtering, 
> port forwarding, ...
> 
> The install is simply a matter of having an empty machine with 64Mb+ of
> RAM and popping the CDROM in.  You answer a few questions (very, very
> simple stuff like your domain name, wether to provide NAT, etc) and 
> voila a server.  You don't have to choose drives or make partitions.  It
> does that for you under the assumption that this thing is a dedicated
> server and the drives are for it's sole use.
> 
> The rest of the configuration is done through a fairly decent web based
> interface.  You can setup users, file shares (called iBays, more on that
> later), groups, mail accounts, service availability (public/private),
> monitor logs, virtual hosts, printers, samba, quotas, etc.  Pretty well
> everything you could want on a small workgroup server.
> 
> E-smith has this nifty feature called iBays.  Basically they are file
> shares that can be accessed through Samba (you can limit who can access
> them), FTP, AppleTalk, and the Web (pick and choose which of these you
> want.  not everything should have ftp/web access :).  For example if I
> was working on a website for a client I can make an ibay called foobar.
> I then would have a network share (through samba/appletalk) I can
> connect to on my local network and use.  I can also, if enabled, connect
> via FTP and maintain the content.  Also each iBay has a public section
> that is served by apache (can be password protected).  So my client can
> conenct to http://server.com/foobar and see my work in progress.  I
> think this is a fairly neat feature and it's really easy to setup.
> 
> I installed it on another machine at home and setup it up to accept all
> of my personal e-mail.   Unfortunately I get a lot of spam so I
> downloaded some contrib RPMS for procmail and spamassassin and installed
> them.  I just go back in the control panel (both rpms added appropriate
> configuration sections in the admin tool) and turned them on.
> Configured hwo sensitive I wanted the SPAM filters and voila.  
> 
> I find the admin interface is rather pokey (perl cgi's) and any changes
> often take 30sec or so to make (on my k62550 / 512M ram) but so far I
> haven't encountered any problems.
> 
> And if you need to make changes that are not supported by the admin
> interface you can do it fairly easily.  All the config files that
> e-smith touches are controlled by template scripts.  You can add your
> own stuff to custom template scripts and ask e-smith to generate that
> file.  Any other times e-smith needs to change it, it will incorporate
> your changes too.  It's rather slick!
> 
> Anyways.  I just wanted to share how impressed I was with the package.
> It seems quite solid and is certainly a lot simpler to setup as a
> workgroup server than installing a normal distro and doing all this
> stuff oneself. 
> 
> If anyone would like copies and can't download the ISO let me know and
> I'll bring copies to the next mtg.
> 
> Jeff
> 
> -- 
> Jeffrey Clement 
> GPG Signature: 2956 42A8 ED8A 91F4 8CE0  A5DF 5293 8E10 6F08 7FB9
> Website      : http://jclement.ca
> 

-- 
Jeffrey Clement 
GPG Signature: 2956 42A8 ED8A 91F4 8CE0  A5DF 5293 8E10 6F08 7FB9
Website      : http://jclement.ca

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