[Tech] setting up a linux mailserver

[Iron_fist]

so after getting some movement on the broken servers boss is moving the windows VPS to a linux one (mainly as the windows mail server it was running is nasty but also to move to a LAMP config rather than WIMP) so the host will be running 3 vhost, company site, product site and webmail under apache and a mail server.

The AMP i can sort easily as i have a fair amount of experience with it, however the mail my knowledge falls down. I think i need a basic chain as follows:

mail server (postfix\exim) -> IMAP\POP server (dovecote) or webmail (atmail) -> outgoing(postfix again?)

basically i need a server to recieve the mail for each alias (i.e me[at]mydomain and another[at]mydomian), serve it to imap or webmail clients and then send mail again via the server. from what i've read Postfix should handle the incoming and outgoing mail, i'm thinking either dovecote or courier for imap and then probably atmail for webmail. where i've gotten totally lost is with spam filter and authentication

anyone(Haven ) able to make sure i'm pointing in the right direction with this or give me a few pointers

cheers
Iron

 

[Haven]

Exim/Dovecot and whatever webmail you desire (I use squirrelmail but there are many options out there).

You do not need separate mail servers for sending and receiving, Exim and Dovecot will scale to thousands on clients per machine as long as you have the storage space. Depending on how big your infrastructure is then you may want a gateway server(s) and then internal storage/distribution servers.

If you do not want exim then postfix is also good albeit not quite as good anti-spam as exim but a little easier to configure.

Alternatively get the boss to contract me and I'll do it all for you