What is the best email server?

squirrelmail
qmail

Thanks drlizau for the references above. Thank you for providing reference for a MTA (mail transfer agent) qmail, as well as an MUA (mail user agent) squirrelmail.

I had heard about squirrelmail before but never looked into it. And I had never heard of qmail.

So now I have some questions. Why do you prefer or recommend qmail over exim, that is loaded by default on Mepis? On another box (in a galaxy far, far away) I installed postfix. But I was only using it for "local" email (within the organization). So, in your opinion, is qmail better than either exim or postfix?

I just found reference to "Life with qmail", that looks useful:
Life with qmail
http://www.lifewithqmail.org/

So I shall read through it.

As to squirrelmail, I like the idea of a web-based interface for email, so I shall take a look at this one too

Thanks again.

Jon

The ability to comfortably use a computer is directly proportional to desire to listen, learn, and experiment, and is inversely proportional to the fear, anger, and stubbornness that you show.

This is one of the reasons I've been holding out...

qmail looks pretty straight forward to install but the second thing on the list for squirrelmail is you need an IMAP server. So if I need an IMAP server, what is a good one? Or is qmail the IMAP server? I don't think it is, but since I am new to open source mail servers I could be wrong.

I would like the mail server I build to have all the "components" on one box. I have my own domain name and won't be using my service provider for email.

Thanks for the advice and help!

Yes johnboy68, qmail would be the IMAP server in this case. That's why drlizau mentioned the two packages. Squirrelmail, or any other "client" (aka MUA) is necessary to read the stuff, but if you want to have your own mail service, then your computer needs to have a Mail Transport Agent (MTA).

I would recommend that you first configure all of the components in a save virtual machine, such as VMware Player, VirtualBox, or Parallels. That way you can load, configure, test, break, modify (repeat) until you get things the way you want. Once properly configured you could either leave it all in the virtual machine, or port the settings over to a "real box".

Jon

The ability to comfortably use a computer is directly proportional to desire to listen, learn, and experiment, and is inversely proportional to the fear, anger, and stubbornness that you show.

I took your advice and setup a VM with VMware Player.

What a great tool. I don't know how I lived without it.

I chose Courier mail since it had everything, including webmail. It was VERY easy to setup and everything was available through Synaptic.

I have it working with a domain name I have registered. I use Verizon DSL so I have to use a Dynamic DNS provider. One thing I found is that most place I have tried to email reject me because I am coming from a DHCP'ed address from Verizon. I have setup SPF with my DNS provider but that doesn't seem to be doing anything.

That make it kind of a show stopper. I guess if I really wanted to go "live" with it I could setup a business account with Verizon and get a static address but that would takeout all the fun.

Just thought I would let you know how it was going.