Ubuntu

Advise on mail server setup

Asked by mc5686

Hi,
I need to setup a dedicated server on my DMZ to handle a few mail accounts.
I have browsed the Internet and I found all too many solutions, so I'm utterly confused.
I would like to get some advise about just how to setup my server to suit my needs.

I have a brand new server to dedicate (actually it will be a virtual machine, but that shouldn't matter) to handle my mails.
I have a registered domain, but the mail for that domain is already handled by my ISP.
I have a handful of users (me, my wife, my daughter, ...).
Each user owns several accounts (one on my personal domain, a gmail account, hotmail account, ISP-provided account, ...)
Each user accesses the net from several possible computer (we have our own laptop, plus a couple of shared Linux machines and a Windows Vista pc in our living room).
I would like the new sever to act as a mail concentrator to hold all the mail, accessed from the LAN via IMAP.

So I need a server that:
- Sits on the DMZ.
- Fetches mail from multiple accounts for each user (fetchmail? what to use for hotmail.com? what for gmail?)
- Stores all mail locally (possibly in maildirs).
- Does antispam and antivirus filtering.
- Serves all clients in the LAN via IMAP.
- Is accessible from the Internet with some form of webmail (to get our mail when we are not at home).
- Is reasonably secure and reasonably easy to setup (I have experience in installing and programming, but I'm no mail guru).
- Does mail forwarding to our ISP mailserver for the outgoing SMTP traffic.
- Allows us to upload to it several years worth of mail currently scattered across various computers.

I would like to have a HOWTO document telling me exactly what to install and how to configure. Unfortunately all things I found either fall short for some reason or describe full fledged mail servers suitable for ISP usage (and thus very complex to setup and maintain.

If some pre-packaged Virtual machine is available it would be just perfect (I saw a Zimbra VM hanging around, but it seemed to me a bit of an overkill).

Can someone point me in the right (middle?) direction?

Thanks in advance
Mauro

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Johan Van de Wauw (johanvdw) said : 		#1

You can use ubuntu server edition for what you need.
some packages you might want to install:
dovecot (IMAP), postfix(SMTP), spamassasin(SPAM), fetchmail, squirrel-mail (webmail)
Your installation will be fairly simple, just install the ubuntu server and choose to activate the mail server during install. Later on you can configure a .fetchmailrc file for every user, and transfer old mails using imap.
Install squirrel-mail

You can use fetchmail for hotmail (with scripts) and gmail:
http://catb.org/~esr/fetchmail/fetchmail-FAQ.html

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mc5686 (mc5686) said : 		#2

I am trying to follow and learning a lot in the process (which is good!), but I would need some further assistance.
I am following several ubuntu FAQs; essentially I'm following the FAQs pointed by:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MailServer
but I'm a bit unsure because it seems outdated, as it seems (more) outdated the other FAQ that looks pertinent:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/POP3Aggregator

In both cases I have to make choices I do not really know what they are for (e.g.: using database versus mailbox versus maildirs).

As stated I need a fairly simple setup with a handful of clients gathering mail from several sources, storing them locally in an easily backuppable format, filtering them (spam, virus and keywords) and make them accessible either via web interface or via IMAP (thunderbird client)).

I know I have a lot of choices... and that's my problem :)
Can someone help narrowing them down?

TiA
Mauro

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#3

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.