Hiya. I'm in the process of setting up a few domains on OpenBSD. This means DNS, Apache and email. I've climbed the DNS and Apache mountains and currently climbing up the mail summit. I've never done this before and have a few questions.
I'm pretty sure I want to use OpenSMTPD - it seems to be the future and simple enough for me. I've spent some time reading the man pages and looking at the misc archives but if there's a pressing reason not to use it I'm ears (okay it's not production ready but this is a hobby box ... and 4.8 is a few weeks away). I expect a handful of clients at remote locations to use an email client (either Thunderbird or most likely Outlook) to be able to access their mail on the server (received from the internet) and to able to send mail through the server. As far as I understand it I have a choice of POP or IMAP and that POP does not synchronize changes from the client onto the server whereas IMAP can. Does this affect whether I need to install any other software? I.e. if I use POP can I get away with smtpd on it's own or do I need to install other software? If I use IMAP do I need to install other software? I notice there are two different methods of storing mail on the server, either in an mbox (where email to a user is a concatenated text file) or to a maildir where emails are individual files. As far as I understand it, smtpd will output in either of these ways. Apart from the robustness point of view, do either of these two affect whether POP or IMAP is used by clients? Do either of these (mbox or maildir) affect whether I need to use additional software? I think I can do the incoming mail configuration but I'm not sure (conceptually) how to do outgoing. Unless I make an open relay I need some way to authenticate users (and also authenticate them access their "inbox" to read their mail). I notice there's a secrets database that's used to authenticate from the OpenBSD box to an external server (gmail for instance). Can it also be used to authenticate external mail clients "logging in" to read their mail and to send mail through the OpenBSD server? Failing that I would need to setup user accounts that are tied down to a maildir with mail sending priviliges, correct? I know that there are other programs I should be contending with (spamd for example) to keep the load off and do virus scanning (via procmail maybe) and whatnot. It will probably be an uphill battle for me and I'll content myself with being able to at least get legitimate mail through and accessible for the time being. If it's at all possible to do this with one set of manpages to read I might have a fighting chance and get to the other stuff later. Please let me know if I'm on the moving in the right direction. Best wishes. _______________________________________________ Openbsd-newbies mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.theapt.org/listinfo/openbsd-newbies
