Re: [PLUG] unraveling the arcane art of mailservers?

On 10/15/07, Brent Saner <brent.saner@gmail.com> wrote:

i've done a fair bit of reading over the past two days, but i'm still having some problems understanding a lot of stuff.

1. exim? postfix? qmail, mta? i have no idea what i should use- well, i know what i want to use, i just have no idea how to implement them, and what they need to integrate. i'm not even entirely sure where to start.

Just read this article recently and found it to be very informative even for seasoned MTA vets: http://shearer.org/MTA_Comparison

2. for you mailmonkeys: how did you start out? what texts would be a good read to start with? i'm a total noob when it comes to mail servers and even local mail. i have a rudimentary understanding but i'm looking to get better.

I learned with the basic understanding of what pieces went where and wrapping my head around my own personal prototype mail systems which was the best way for me. Sendmail and BIND's documentation was also greatly helpful in the beginning.

3. any mailman gurus in here? i'd also love to get my hands on some good starting points for mailman, and understanding how it works with other components of the mail system.

Mailman typically sits on the localhost and accepts mail like a regular user would through mail 'aliases', then does all kinds of routing/filtering/rule checks with it via python and feeds it back to the mail queue for sending. That's the basic process.

Hope this helps.

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