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Thread: SquirrelMail - Need some info

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    Jay
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    SquirrelMail - Need some info

    If anyone here admins a SquirrelMail server I need some info...

    What software do you use for your email / IMAP server etc?

    do you run them all on same server hardware?

    What kind of spec do you use for you server(s)?

    What kind of bandwith am I looking at per user?

    I was looking at using SquirrelMail + Postfix + Courier-IMAP + POP3 and fetchmail

    thanks.
    Last edited by Jay; 08-04-2008 at 07:33 PM.
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    The late but legendary peterb - Onward and Upward peterb's Avatar
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    Re: SquirrelMail - Need some info

    I don't think it matters what the POP/IMAP server is provided that you have one - squirrel mail makes use of it.
    I have just set up a mailserver with postfix and dovecot (not using squirrelmail) but the the postfix/courier/squirrelmail combination is well documented. (Of course you will also need php to be installed as well as a web server (apache?))

    I'll have a look tonight - not got the stuff with me atm.

    (Incidentally, if you haven't got it "Postfix - The Definitive Guide" by Kyle Dent, published by O''Reilly is an excellent book - well worth buying with lots of advice about UBE and subtle configuration options)
    Last edited by peterb; 09-04-2008 at 10:22 AM.
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    Comfortably Numb directhex's Avatar
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    Re: SquirrelMail - Need some info

    pfft, postfix. cool kids still use sendmail!

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    Re: SquirrelMail - Need some info

    2nd vote for Postfix and Dovecot - I started looking at courier etc, but I couldn't find precompiled pkgs for Solaris - which is the target platform I had.

    They're not massive resource hogs, but "What kind of spec do you use for you server(s)?" is a bit of a floaty question - how many users are you looking to support and on what OS?

    Bandwidth will obviously depend on what the users are doing.

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    Jay
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    Re: SquirrelMail - Need some info

    This is going to be a big job. I should have the Trixbox server for the helpdesk finished and installed by the end of the week but then I have a migration to a new DC so I guess i won't get round to even starting this for a few weeks. I'll do some reading up I think.

    What spec should I bee looking at for the server?

    Should a low end core 2 with RAID 1 drvies and 1gb of RAM do the job, I am out of rack space at the moment so It will need to be a desktop server. HP seem to do some nice ones.
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    Re: SquirrelMail - Need some info

    I use exim4 courier and squirrel mail

    Set up was pretty easy

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    Re: SquirrelMail - Need some info

    I had a quick look at one of the books - I found a methd in "The Linux Cookbook" by Carla Schroeder (O'Reilly) chapter 20. It specifically uses postfix/Courier Imap/Squirrel mail - almost a step by step guide. The book itself is a little dated (but still useful - lots of other stuff in it that is useful for system administration), so read it in conjunction with the book I mentioned earlier.

    Googleing with the terms

    postfix Squirrelmail

    also gives a lot of info (as I'm sure you have discovered!)
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    Re: SquirrelMail - Need some info

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay View Post

    What spec should I bee looking at for the server?

    Should a low end core 2 with RAID 1 drvies and 1gb of RAM do the job, I am out of rack space at the moment so It will need to be a desktop server. HP seem to do some nice ones.
    As I said before - it will depend on the number of users you want to support, and their volume of mail, and also the operating system. I presume you're going to use some Linux distro? That being the case, and assuming you're running under 100 users with a reasonably low mail volume, you should be OK, although I would drop a bit more RAM in - it's cheap now anyway.

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    Re: SquirrelMail - Need some info

    B0redom is right - "it depends"! One of the references I gave you suggests that for 100 users, a 1'5GHz cpu, 256 RAM and a30Gb drive would be suuficient for 100 users - hoever that ref is about 3 years old, and I would guess that it is a minimal Linux installation with no GUI installed (and you don't really need one). You can ssh into the box to administer it, although during the set up and tuning phase you may find a gui interface useful, if only to allow you to open multipkle terminal windows. There are no (afaik) any gui tools for configuring any of the mailserver components.

    Given that drives are cheap as chips (and you would be hard pushed to find one that small) I'd certainly up the storage to at least 250Gb, !GB Ram will be sufficient. RAID one a good idea, and of course a UPS. You mailserver should ideally be a machine dedicated to the task. I haven't tried this, but squirrel mail will need to be on that machine, but I don't know if you can run Apache on another. If not, and you are running another webserver, you will need to consider how to direct traffic to the correct server. (Perhaps by IP address or by port - run the mail server installation at port 8080 for example - I am assumoing this is for users outside the intranet) Otherwise you need to configure the existing server to look at the mailserver for webmail.

    Do you really need webmail? Authentication methods (SASL) and/or SSL are quite easy to implement and give secure login for external users.

    With an IMAP set up, ypu will need to keep an eye on disk storage should users not delete their mail, and ypou may want to implement a quota system

    Don't underestimate the administration tasks either. I have just set up a very modest mailserver, for 3 domains. No problem wiyth a limited number of users, but I have just configured it as a backup mailbox for my main (hosted) mailservice. Of course the spammers have latched onto that and now try to clear spam through the secondary mailserver (mine!) so you need to understand and monitor your spam controls very carefully. You can do a lot in Postfix itself, but you need to balance Spam rejection against the risk of false positives if the rules are very restrictive. The warn_if_reject directive is useful - but you must check the logs!!! I use logwatch which sends me a summary of the last 24hrs log activity, but at the moment while I am setting up spam controls, I am monitoring the logs themselves.

    You can also use procmail for content filtering, and you may want to consider AV checking and reject mail carrying malware. ClamAV iintegrates with postfix. You may also want to think about integrating Spamassassin.

    Building the server in stages is a good idea too. Start with Postfix, get that going, then look at the IMAP server, then add the other components for webmail.

    How are you clearing outgoing mail. The simplest way is to relay it to your ISP (provided their T&Cs allow you to do that) If you don't relay, but attempt delivery directly, you may find that some mail is rejected by recipient hosts/mailboxes unless you have some authentication method in place, usually a sender policy framework. Relay to an ISP is simplest! You may want to build a test set up first (perhaps with a subset of users) to gain some experience before you go into production with it.

    One other thought - Outlook doesn't seem to play very nicely with Imap - it works, but its a bit clunky. Later versions might be better, I've only tried it with Outlook 2000. Evolution (Linux only) works very well with it though!

    Think about security. You may end up building two servers - one internal looking that serves users but relays to an outgoing gatway server that only acts as a relay. An added layer of complexity, but greater scope for fine tuning. It is probably unnecessary in your case, but the process is described in the first reference I gave you.

    Finally, in addition to those refs, read the man pages for postfix. Postfix is extremely well documented, Dovecot less so; I can't comment on Courier-IMAP.

    Last note - whatever you do - make sure you do not inadvertently configure the system as an open relay. If you do, your server will be blacklisted faster than you can say "Oh s**t"!!

    Quote Originally Posted by directhex View Post
    pfft, postfix. cool kids still use sendmail!
    Couldn't get to grips with the scripting language for the configuration file! (Not cool enough!) I note a lot of ISPs use qmail or Excim
    Last edited by peterb; 10-04-2008 at 10:30 AM.
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    Jay
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    Re: SquirrelMail - Need some info

    My 60 day Exchange 2007 trial period ended so I finally did this but only for my home network.

    CentOS
    Apache with HTTPS (self signed)
    Postfix
    Dovecot
    Squirrel mail

    all on ESXi



    I use a basic mx record on my domain name and relay my mail via a smarthost. Its not as good as exchange but its still pretty nice.

    Next I am going to setup procmail to sort my Nagios warnings into folders etc. I am thinking about co-locating my server in Manchester.
    Last edited by Jay; 27-03-2009 at 10:51 PM.
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    Re: SquirrelMail - Need some info

    I got a dedicated server in paris at the mom with OVH. although i`m looking at buying a 1u rack and getting it hosted at work for free

    I am using debian, Exim4, Courier and Squirrel mail and Find it really easy to use.

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    Jay
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    Re: SquirrelMail - Need some info

    getting it hosted at work for free
    same here
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    Re: SquirrelMail - Need some info

    Half-heatedly trying to get fetchmail to work so I can download from my main hosts POP server and then use IMAP to access it. But really I should have the courage of my convictions and bin the mail host and self host that domain as well!
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