[sllug-members]: Mail server question

[Knight Walker]

On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 13:38 -0700, Spute, Mark K @ CSW-SLC wrote:
> I currently have a mail server running sendmail without procmail or
> spamassasin, and I get about 500 spam messages per day.  I want to use
> spamassasin to cut down on the spam, but at the same time, since I'm
> messing with the system, I'd like to add the capacity to access my
> e-mail via the internet from other locations.  As I mentioned, I'm
> running sendmail as my POP3 server, and using thunderbird to access
> it.
> 
> If I switch to dovecot can I get rid of sendmail?  Dovecot claims to
> be both a POP3 and an IMAP server.
> 
> What would be the best way to transition?  ie-
> 
> 1.  remove sendmail 
> 2.  Install and configure dovecot 
> 3.  Install and configure procmail 
> 4.  Install and configure spamassasin 
> 5.  Massage until they all work together
> 
> Or is another order better.

You're a little confused. Sendmail is not a POP3 server, it's an SMTP
server.  The difference is that SMTP transports mail from server to
server and POP3/IMAP transports mail from server to client.

That said, you can use Dovecot with Sendmail just fine.  Personally, I
prefer Postfix, but I did use Sendmail prior and it worked well enough.

What you would probably want to do is:

0. Find out what you're really using for POP3 (imapd-2002?)
1. Install and configure dovecot
2. Install and configure Procmail and Spamassassin.  These two are
inter-related in most systems I've seen.
3. Massage until they work together.

Also, if you want to check your e-mail "via the internet", you'll want
to switch to IMAP, as that allows you to keep all your mail on your
server, and can thus access it via Evolution, Thunderbird, SquirrelMail,
and anything else that's not retarded when using IMAP (I only mention
Outlook because it mostly works with IMAP).

-KW