Help with Mail Server

[LRT]

Here is what I'm trying to do. We have a small network of about 20 users. We have an email host provider that we use for our email accounts. I want to be able to setup a server in our network that will be able to route emails from our network and destined for our network without having to go through our email host provider. So for example, if user1@abc.com wants to send an email to user2@abc.com, the email will be routed inside our network and won't ever reach the host provider.

Hope this makes sense. Is this possible? I know very little about mail servers.

[Lars Noodén]

Take a look at any of these three MTA packages. The result you are proposing is one of the options during the installation:

Dovecot
http://www.dovecot.org/
Postfix
http://www.postfix.org/
Exim
http://www.exim.org/


If you are looking for big, ugly all-in-one mail,calendar,contacts then the above will be a small component inside one of these:

Kolab
http://www.kolab.org/

Citadel
http://www.citadel.org/

Dingo Calendar Server
http://andrew.triumf.ca/dingo/

Darwin CalendarServer
http://trac.calendarserver.org/

Bedework
http://www.bedework.org/

[LRT]

thanks for your reply... i know i'm probably going to have to dive into some documentation for this since i've never done anything like this. out of the first three you mentioned (dovecot, postfix, exim) which one or (or maybe others) do you recommend for simple beginner setups?

[ainsworth_t]

If you're looking for documentation to help out with setting up a mail server, check out:
Ubuntu Community Documentation - Servers: https://help.ubuntu.com/9.04/serverguide/C/email-services.html


Ubuntu Server Guide - Email Services: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Servers#Mail,%20Groupware,%20and%20Chat%20Servers

[LRT]

thanks.. i really would like to know if anyone has experience with what i'm trying to do (see post #1) and can perhaps provide some more detailed technical guidance if possible... thanks

[noway2]

The programs mentioned in a post above, at least postfix and dovecot, serve different purposes, but work together to implement an email server. Postfix is what is called an MTA, or mail transfer agent. It acts as your SMTP server and receives incoming emails and files them for local delivery as well as forwarding outgoing emails to the next hop in the chain. Dovecot implements the POP and IMAP functions to allow someone to retrieve their emails. Chances are you would want both.

There are a number of threads in this forum on the subject to give you some material for initial research. Hint: search for postfix and / or dovecot. The posts will also reference many of the excellent how to documents to help get you started.