[oclug] Need help installing postfix on my home server

[Brad Barnett]

On Sat, 06 Jun 2009 09:33:15 -0400
"Piotr R. Sidorowicz" <prsidoro at mavericsolutions.ca> wrote:

> Hi Rob,
> 
...
> 
> As for the server itself, the simplest thing for a MTA newbie is to do 
> is to set up Zimbra Community edition.

Uh, Piotr, I have to intervene here.

First of all, the guy wants a simple daemon to send alerts to an email
address, hosted who knows where!  Instead of installing one program, in a
very simple way, you are suggesting he installs dozens of programs,
daemons, and pieces of software!

That is, after all, what Zimbra is.

Not only is Zimbra more complex, in that Zimbra is an MTA + dozens
of other programs, Rob likely does not even want 99.9% of Zimbra's
functionality!  Good grief man, he wants an MTA, not an MTA, plus a pop,
imap, alert, webmail, calendar, and a dozen other apps!

Your suggestion is a colossal way to waste disk space, memory, and CPU
cycles! 

On top of this, Zimbra will require constant manual updates in order to
stay ahead of security issues, which would be handled automatically by
apt-get upgrades in a native OS environment!

As well, not only will the user have to have a grasp of how email works,
answering more questions during install than for postfix alone, they will
also be dealing with a non-distro environment! Everything will be
segmented away from the OS!

Log files will appear in /opt, daemons will be running outside of
runlevel scripts, docs won't appear in easy to find locations, and a
Zimbra setup could easily be turned into mush by an inexperienced user.

By comparison, an exim or postfix setup using apt + ubuntu is a piece of
cake, and Zimbra is a confusing myriad of landmines waiting to go off.
New MTA admins should run for the hills, instead of considering setting
up Zimbra.

Note, that I have no problem with Zimbra, I've rolled it out before.  It
is a fairly good setup.  However, using it in the wrong place, for the
wrong reasons, in the wrong way, is just plain silly.

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Piotr
> 
> Rob Young wrote:
> > I have a small home server that I want to enable outgoing mail on, so
> > asterisk can send out email to me on certain events.  Unfortunately,
> > I'm very clueless as to how to set this up.  How does one set up
> > outgoing mail?  I'm running  a fairly current version of ubuntu
> > without X.
> > 
> > Thanks!
> > Rob
> 
> 
> -- 
> Piotr R. Sidorowicz, PhD         phone: 613.822.2094
> 1819 Rideau Rd	                  voip: sip:prsidorowicz at ekiga.net
> Gloucester, On, Canada, K1X 1E1  email: prsidoro at mavericsolutions.ca
> -- 
> OCLUG general discussion list
> OCLUG at lists.oclug.on.ca
> http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/oclug