[GRLUG] setting up a simple test email server

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Mon, 2013-03-25 at 09:50 -0400, Jonathan Jesse wrote:
> And this is a pretty newbie/dumb question but I would assume if I want
> mail (smtp and pop) and webmail then there would be 2 sets of packages
> (programs) to configure as well?  
> Also (don't want to start a flame war) but is there one Mail System
> (Postfix, Cyrus) that is better (easier) to setup and configure.

No, and neither of those is difficult to configure/setup.

In my experience, other than changing settings for the domain, etc...
and selecting an authentication mechanism they work out-of-the-box.

If someone is having a great deal of trouble configuring them then they
are trying too hard, I've seen this rather frequently. Breathe, get a
cup of coffee, and start over.

openSUSE / SUSE provides a distribution-specific tool - YaST - that will
do all the configuration for you.  But, again, it isn't much.  The
default configurations are nearly there for 99.44% of installs.

1.) Authentication
1.a.) Cyrus
1.b.) Postfix
 - in either case saslauthd PLAIN is the simplest for a testing network
or bootstrapping.
2.) Delivery [Postfix delivers to Cyrus via LMTP, for instance]
3.) What is your domain?
4.) SSL/TLS?  Maybe not relevant for a testing network.

Almost all Postfix configuration should be performed with the postconf
tool, STAY OUT OF VI!  If someone tells you to use VI to configure
Postfix then ignore anything they ever say after that, forever.

This might also be helpful 

<http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com/2012/02/configuring-postfix-as-smtp-client.html>

-- 
Adam Tauno Williams  GPG D95ED383
Systems Administrator, Python Developer, LPI / NCLA