Postfix, qmail, what do I use? How do I set them up?

Hello everybody!

I have been thinking about setting up a mail server on my suse 9.0 server (cant do anything about it at the moment, would prefer something else as well ), but first of all I cant decide on the server software to use, postfix, qmail and so on. Can anyone give me some very much appreciated advice on that please? thx

Secondly, I managed getting my apache and ftp-servers to run but I think I might need some help (also, very much appreciated) setting up whatever mailserver I choose in the end.

All help given would be greatly appreciated

Yours
Etherius

I hate to start another "which mail server is the best" thread, but I think qmail rules the known universe.

check www.qmailrocks.org or http://sylvestre.ledru.info/howto/howto_qmail_vpopmail.php for some excellent howtos.

I would say to go with Postfix over qmail.

First, the license of Postfix is less restrictive (in terms of what you can/can't do with the source code and its compiled binaries). Daniel Bernstein (the author of qmail) has quite different views on what he feels one's rights to software are and aren't.

Second, according to an independent benchmark*, it seems as though Postfix is much more efficient (and stable) at delivering mail than qmail.

Third, you will have access to SuSE packages for Postfix**. To set up a decent qmail installation, you'll have to compile everything manually, with the potential of really screwing up your entire system, trying to meet minimum dependency requirements (this happened to me while attempting to set up a qmail installation on a Debian Woody system).

You would also probably want to give POP3 access to your mail system. I suggest using GNU pop3d to do this.

For Postfix documentation, please see http://www.postfix.org/documentation.html.

For information on integrating GNU pop3d with Postfix, please see GNU pop3d & Postfix Virtual Domains.

Alternatively, if you'd like a completely GPL solution, check out GNU Mailutils, but good luck finding a HOWTO on this.

If you need additional help, please reply in this thread.

* http://www-dt.e-technik.uni-dortmun...ix/vsqmail.html

** According to http://www.postfix.org/packages.html, SuSE ships with Postfix built in.