Re: setting up a new QPopper server

[Joe Maimon]

Patrick O'Neal wrote:

Hi all,

I am looking at setting up qpopper on a Gentoo based Linux system Kernel
2.4.X. I have never setup qpopper before and after looking at the
QPopper manual I see a lot of things but no actuall help. What I am
looking at doing is the following:
1. Setup a POP3 server for about 10-20 users.
 

Configure,make and install the qpopper server. Read the documentation. 
Setup {X}inetd if neccessary.

2. Hopefully use SSL or APOP<all I have read says that MS Outlook can't
authenticate with APOP, is this true?
 

Forget APOP. IIRC you need to maintain a seperate DB for apop users of 
their cleartext. Stick to SSL. qpopper supports that quite well
(read the doc)

3. Allow a web interface for users to check there email as well.
 

As other poster points out there are literaly hordes of them! You can 
squirrel away as many as you have patience for.
(knowledge or ability to follow directions regarding apache/php setup 
will be quite usefull)

http://www.horde.org/imp/
http://www.squirrelmail.org/
4. I don't need digests right now but it might be cool in the future.
5. Set up sendmail so that only my users can use it. NO RELAYING!< I
have found some info on this, but I am sure there is more somewhere.
 

If you stick to sendmail (IMHO a cross between a dragon and dinosaur - 
the debate is which of its qualities is foremost)

Install sendmail. Check your /etc/mail/sendmail.mc for the configuration

Read the sendmail faq at www.sendmail.org
Read the tarball's doc/op/op.ps
Read the tarball's sendmail/README cf/README INSTALL files
To have your users use it, configure your MTA of choice to use STARTTLS 
and SMTPS. Then you can safely use SMTP AUTH for your roaming users.

For legacy users, dracd is a nice alternative that works fine for 
sendmail and qpopper installations.
http://mail.cc.umanitoba.ca/drac/

6. Get some sleep at night! 
 

Spend a day or two on the documentation and at the commandline and you 
will be set.
I advise printing out all the documentation you can find about the 
packages you choose to go with

Printed books: Sendmail 3rd edition, DNS and BIND

I have some meager experience with admin'ng a sendmail box -- 
www.jmaimon.com/sendmail

I have never setup POP3, I have set up an Exchange server, but I really
don't want to really on MS at all if I can help it! Any help,
suggestions would be great!
 

The interesting thing about new incarnations of Exchange and the old 
Unix email philosophy is that now both Unix and Microsoft have the 
systems's idea of users and email intricately bound. In conventional 
systems, pop3 is a method of accessing a unix users mail spool file. You 
might also want to add imap access.

Here is one: http://www.washington.edu/imap/

Nowadays, with ldap and the like it has become much easier for unix 
systems to abstract the mail system away from the unix users systems.

Joe

Patrick O'Neal