If you’ve been following the site lately you would know that I have been moving from a Windows Server to a Linux one and while most of this has been fairly smooth, try to get an email solution has not been one of them.
I initally tried to get Postfix going but found that my first attempts were unsuccessful to say the least. (I need multiple domains and users etc.) Then I tried sendmail for just sever out email from the sites, this did work but didn’t give me a full solution. So I removed it and tried my next option.
Citadel and Zimbra I looked at next.
I would have liked to use Zimbra and one day I might but there was no version for my current OS and the hacks to get it working are still outside of my Linux experience level. So I install Citadel, it worked had a few strange quirks when I used it with Roundcube, but it did most of what I wanted. I upgrade me OS to the latest release and then Citadel stopped working and a reinstall would not fix the problems.
So I removed it completely and went back to Postfix, with MySQL,SASL, TLS, AV and Grey listings. This time I was able to get it installed and working for sending mail from the server along with multiple domains and receiving emails. I just wasn’t able to send emails from an external clients. (Outlook, Roundcube etc.)
I was having problems with the SASL and SMTP athentication from external sources, I checked everything recreated certificates, googled like mad to find a solution. Even did reinstalls of certain parts.
After checking all of the logs, I decided to have a look at the syslog and there I saw a different error and this lead me to a new Google search and the answer to my problem. One of the config files for pam didn’t like the “#” I used for the database access password, so it would read half the line but then stop at the “#” so the SASL didn’t know the database to access for the user details.
Spent a few nights trying to work this one out, so a change of password for the db user fixed the issue and now all seems to be working ok.
I just have to set up getmail to fetch my external emails then I’ll be able to shutdown the email server on the windows server, which means it can be turned off during the day and used for backups at night and media sharing when were all home. This leave the new quieter box running 24/7 for hosting, email, etc.