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Steve BinkFlag for United States of America

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Email Services on Fedora

Newbie on Linux, but learning fast...I think.  I still need a lot of hand-holding...

Trying to set up full email services (SMTP, POP3, IMAP4) on a box running Fedora FC4.  I've been toying with PostFix to no avail, and the dovecot service will not even start.  I know this is the SendMail TA, but there isn't one for PostFix.  If necessary, I'll start with SendMail and migrate later, no doubt through more questions.  :)

So what I need is a tutorial.  How do I set this thing up, how do I test it, how do I manage it, etc.  Pretty wide scope, but I'm willing to post as many 500pt questions as necessary until it is done and I understand the concepts of how to do it.  I'll let you guys direct me to the first step, and that will be the scope of this question.  Here's some basic stats to start:

Fedora Core FC4, kernel 2.6.11..something (don't have it in front of me ATM), "Everything" install.  SendMail, PostFix, and dovecot are all installed (verified through rpm -qa).  PostFix is currently the MTA in use.  The dovecot service will not start when asked to from the shell ("/etc/init.d/dovecot start" returns FAILED).  Currently running on an intranet at home, but will be migrated to a company email server behind a firewall.  Ports for SMTP, POP, and IMAP have been opened.
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Yup, I had already seen that question.  I imagine it is a great compilation for people who know a little bit about what they are doing, but I don't fall into that category, unfortunately.

>>>  0) sendmail is already appropriately-compiled for your system, is properly installed, and runs without choking

That is actually the first step I am trying to verify, except using PostFix.  sendmail was the MTA picked during the install, and whichever service I pick seems to be running fine (as reported in the "Services" GUI in Gnome, and ps from shell).  If I understand it correctly, sendmail/PostFix is just an SMTP server...how can I verify it is receiving mail sent from external sources?
sendmail and Postfix are very different creatures. While they are both SMTP Message Transfer Agents (MTAs), their construction and configuration is very different. If you're using Postfix, I'm really not qualified to help you.
Update: still working with it, but I was able to use telnet to speak with the SMTP server from localhost.  I'll be continuing my experimentation and will post back as necessary.  In the meantime, any pointers, tips, instructions, links, superpowers, magical "it's just there" setup a-la Bewitched will be appreciated...
Did you read documentation while playing around ???
http://www.postfix.org/documentation.html
http://www.sendmail.org/m4/readme.html

Consider exim and qmail too....

Another thing is how will you serve mailbox-es to your users via POP3 and IMAP -
courier-imap
cyrus-imap
uw-imap
dovecot

Somebody will for sure ask for webmail - be it horde, openwebmail or phpgroupware

Probably you should now consider mailbox format - mbox or maildir, depending on your choice this will limit mailbox access software
And the way you will store user accounts - LDAP, SQL or file on one single mail machine

And most important - use software packages exclusively from system maker, at least while you do not fully understand how to make a package on your own.
hrrmm..yeah...the docs are not as helpful as one might imagine.  I suppose they are great for someone who already knows the ins and outs of Linux, but that I'm not that person yet.  Nonetheless, I have the entire documentation tree from www.postfix.org saved offline, since the postfix RPM does not come with its own copy of the HTML help...much easier than man pages, at least.

So, now I've been able to direct domain mail to my server, and am hosting a virtual domain for testing purposes.  Seems to work with SMTP, so now I get to play with POP3 and IMAP.  I was unable to find any rpms for them using the instructions from postfix (rpm -qa | grep pop; rpm -qa | grep imap) leaving me to guess I'll be using dovecot for now.  Exim caught my eye before, but as you pointed out, I'd rather reduce my learning curve with the system before branching out into bigger/better.  Same goes for the webmail...isn't it SquirrelMail I'm looking at for this?  (comes installed with Fedora)

Since the original scope of this question has been resolved (SMTP up and running), I'll award points for workable instructions on converting mbox to maildir.  With as small of a domain as we have right now, it is not strictly necessary, but maildir is just better (from the reports I've seen), and will handle future, heavier loads easier than mbox.  Alternatively, complete instructions for migrating to db-based authentication.  Beware: this involves me learning how to work in MySQL/PostGreSQL.  I have background with MSSQL, but I have not even glanced at Linux SQL platforms yet.  Besides, I'd hate to just close the question without award...

For those of you with experience with dovecot, please go here:

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21531401/POP-IMAP-services-on-Fedora-FC4.html

Outlook is pain in the ass
I would tend to agree.  :)
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gheist
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Thanks for the tips, gheist.  I have made sure that line is implemented.  As a sidenote, it seems to have fixed an inconsistent time-out error I was having with outlook express, at least temporarily.  I'll only know for sure after a bit more testing.

End result is I have PostFix and Dovecot up and running in a test environment for now.  We will be running it concurrently (hosting a virtual domain) with our hosted mail for at least the next week to watch reliability and verify the configuration.  If no one else has any useful input on the items below, I'll request this question be closed:

1) POP-Before-SMTP authentication
2) Conversion to MailDir format
3) Conversion to SQL-based user authentication
4) Attachment sizes/quotas on a per-user/per-box basis
> Thanks for the tips, gheist.
True, I did use your suggestion to resolve a secondary issue.  If we can reduce the points (100 sound fair?) I will accept that answer.