Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community  

Go Back   Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community > Interests > Tilted Technology


 
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
Old 04-18-2004, 05:51 PM   #1 (permalink)
Loser
 
Location: Paradise
A good free Mail Server ... and SAVE MY JOB...

I am a newly hired fairly computer savvy guy without a lot of server experience. My boss has a proprietary mail server that -- frankly -- sucks. Its old, has HUGE amounts of trouble with attachments, and needs to be replaced. My company is small, so my job involves many, many things--some technical, like our servers. I'm tasked with choosing a mail server -- a free one -- and I've narrowed it down to MailExchange since it has a very functional free version (I think). I've been thru the manual and it seems like it would be a good choice for an office with only 8 employees that has to host its own mail server (he insists). Any advice/opinions? The manual talks about an MX DNS address that I have to set up with my domain provider. Isn't that just the DNS that I can get when I lookup our domain with Network Solutions? I'd like to get this done and move on so I can get off on the right foot.

Thanks for your help.
Cheese
cheesemoney is offline  
Old 04-18-2004, 08:21 PM   #2 (permalink)
Psycho
 
Location: Boston, MAss., USA
About the MX record: Your company has a domain (yourdomain.com) that you registered with networksolutions. When you registered, you told networksolutions which DNS servers had the original info about the domain (where the mail server, web server, etc. are) that's called the Start Of Authority (SOA). Now, on those servers (which you can see by doing a whois lookup on your domain), you have a domain file, that contains the IP address of your mail server. It's indicated by the MX name in the line. The MX record will have a host name, and there will be a host record (indicated with an A on the line), for the host's IP address. That IP has to be either: a) The Ip address of the mail server, if it's directly connected, or b) pointing at the outside address of your router, and your router does a passthrough to the internal ip address of your mail server.
__________________
I'm gonna be rich and famous, as soon I invent a device that lets you stab people in the face over the internet.
JohnnyRoyale is offline  
Old 04-18-2004, 10:27 PM   #3 (permalink)
Loser
 
Location: Paradise
hmm... right now he had it configured--I think-- so that it was pointing to the address of the firewall -- (thru the DMZ). It goes modem, firewall, router, etc, and I think that the firewall has a DNS setting. Am I wrong? This is a bit confusing for me because though I have basic home router experience, I've never set up a several hundred dollar hardware firewall, let alone a mail server at the same time.
cheesemoney is offline  
Old 04-18-2004, 10:48 PM   #4 (permalink)
Junkie
 
Location: Florida
Sounds like the router has an internal translation where it takes anything sent to mail.domain.com and/or e-mail related ports and routes it to a local IP. It's hard to give advice on that without knowing more specifics though.

As for the mail server, I'd suggest running sendmail under Linux. If it's not the most widely used mail server, it's certainly up there. qmail is gaining ground, but I think it's a tremendous pain in the ass to use in comparison for small networks.
irseg is offline  
Old 04-18-2004, 11:40 PM   #5 (permalink)
Loser
 
Location: Paradise
Can't run linux in the office. My boss is married to the Microsoft OS, since he has a developer come in from time to time. On my own time, I'd like to learn to set up a server under linux for my own personal education, but it just ain't gonna fly in the office.
cheesemoney is offline  
Old 04-19-2004, 06:35 AM   #6 (permalink)
A Real American
 
Holo's Avatar
 
maybe these would help you:

http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/se...ailserver.html

http://www.nonags.com/nonags/servd32.html
__________________
I happen to like the words "fuck", "cock", "pussy", "tits", "cunt", "twat", "shit" and even "bitch". As long as I am not using them to describe you, don't go telling me whether or not I can/should use them...that is, if you want me to continue refraining from using them to describe you. ~Prince
Holo is offline  
Old 04-19-2004, 06:58 AM   #7 (permalink)
Right Now
 
Location: Home
Poke around freshmeat.net. Most of the projects are for posix systems, but there is a lot that will run on windows.

http://freshmeat.net/browse/33/
Peetster is offline  
Old 04-19-2004, 05:46 PM   #8 (permalink)
Psycho
 
Location: Boston, MAss., USA
Here's a look at Yahoo's mail DNS setup, as an example:
Non-authoritative answer:
yahoo.com MX preference = 5, mail exchanger = mx4.mail.yahoo.com
yahoo.com MX preference = 1, mail exchanger = mx1.mail.yahoo.com
yahoo.com MX preference = 1, mail exchanger = mx2.mail.yahoo.com

mx4.mail.yahoo.com internet address = 66.218.86.198

I severely edited this, to make it simple: See the line with the MX in it? that's the MX record. Then, later in the DNS, you see the IP address. Now, on your domain, where's that address? Is it on the firewall's exterior, or on the server itself?

You got the networksolutions part correct, that's where the servers that have those MX records are, if you need to edit them, which you probably will, if you change the mail server around. If the IP/Names are familiar, then you may own those servers. If not, then you may outsource it to your isp. check the domain on those DNS servers, and see if it's yours or someone elses.
__________________
I'm gonna be rich and famous, as soon I invent a device that lets you stab people in the face over the internet.
JohnnyRoyale is offline  
Old 04-19-2004, 09:08 PM   #9 (permalink)
Loser
 
Location: Paradise
I guess I screwed up. The program I was looking at was called Mail Enable, not Xpress. Basically, I like it because it gives you an unlimited # of users. Imail looks nice but only lets you set up 10. We're around that number now, just for employee addreses--we need room for help@domain.com and company@domain.com, etc.

Now, only outbound mail has to reference the DNS, right?

As for the servers, I'm pretty sure we own them. We have like 5 ips, 2 of which I believe are for DNS. We host our own web and mail server, so I have these addresses.

I appreciate the link for all of the free server tools--anyone wanna make a reccomendation for a company that should soon be expanding to about 10 employees? We don't necessarily NEED webmail, and we don't NEED virus integration (but wouldn't mind it since right now we don't have antivirus on the server--only the client machines). We NEED some sort of spam protection. Definitely.
cheesemoney is offline  
Old 04-21-2004, 04:15 PM   #10 (permalink)
Psycho
 
Location: Boston, MAss., USA
The outbound mail server needs SOME dns, but only to translate the domain name of the mail to the destination IP. Inbound mail is going to need to know an IP address to talk to to get the mail to you. That's what the MX record does, it tells someone else's mail server what IP to connect to, to get the mail TO you.
__________________
I'm gonna be rich and famous, as soon I invent a device that lets you stab people in the face over the internet.
JohnnyRoyale is offline  
Old 04-21-2004, 11:44 PM   #11 (permalink)
Loser
 
Location: Paradise
Thanks guys. So anyone have a favorite free server?
cheesemoney is offline  
Old 04-22-2004, 10:11 PM   #12 (permalink)
Crazy
 
Location: N.Ireland
postfix on freebsd baby
blackcow is offline  
 

Tags
free, good, job, mail, save, server


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



All times are GMT -8. The time now is 11:57 PM.

Tilted Forum Project

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360