Customer Reviews

Linux Email: Set Up and Run a Small Office Email Server

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Email is probably still the most important application on the Internet. More so than browsing. But setting up an email server can be fraught with complexity under unix or linux. In response, Taylor offers a straightforward guide to installing and running a server for a small company. One attraction about the book's software is that it is all open source and free.

Understanding enough of it to usefully maintain it is another matter. But Taylor gives enough explanations of various key applications. Like Postfix and Procmail and SpamAssassin. This is still not a simple book. For example, SpamAssassin's classification of an email as possible spam is a statistical assessment based on a set of rules typically seen in spam. But it is quite possible for an email that you want to get hit by this and marked as spam. You might want to experiment with SpamAssassin's settings until you are comfortable with the results.

I actually got myself in quite a pickle at work introducing them to linux. Immediately they wanted it on our network starting with an email server. First of all, I am a programmer, not a system admin. Second, I use linux on a daily basis at work and home but not for servers. Desperately, I reached for this book for help. Bad idea at the beginning at least. The book's way of going through setting up postfix at the beginning was no help for me and my novice knowledge with servers. I ended up getting everything setup thanks to google and wikipedia howtos. Later I blew dust off this book and picked it up for another go. Now that I understand the basics I am at a comfort level with this book, but still have struggles here and there. This book, however, definitely helped me with setting up squirrelmail and spamassassin. Definitely recommend this book to somebody with a basic understanding of linux and some-what of an understanding of servers.

The book does a fine job of giving an overview of the suite of mail servers. The setup steps are introduced from easiest (basic) to more complex (enhanced), allowing the reading to incrementally set up their environment. This is important in that it provides milestones where testing can take place before enhancements are introduced.

I knocked off two stars because the authors failed to give clear instructions for setting up virtual users in Postfix and Courier-IMAP's POP3 and IMAP service. I had to search the web for this information. Virtual users are critical for a modern day email system, and the failure to flesh-out a virtual-user capable system is a major short-coming.

In one sentence : A full step by step guide...

Of course if we ask you to set up a mail server on linux, that's because you know a few things about linux.

Easy to understand, all is fully explained and commented.

Part 1 : Basics

It starts by explaining mail server services.

Part 2 : Starting

Install your mail server running Postfix, POP, IMAP.

Allow Web access with the spectacular SquirrelMail.

Part 3 : Securing

Chapters about security are really good, explain giving a lot of indications.

Security is a really important aspect in computer science, especially in the server world...that's why, in this book, you can find a lot of useful chapters about securing mail server.

Fight spam with the popular SpamAssassin.

Block viruses and worms with legendar ClamAV.

Secure authentication...

All are fully explained including schemas, scripts and examples...

Part 4 : Maintain

Backup your mail server is fully explained.

There are many examples with different situations exposed.

In conclusion, if you want to quickly setup a mail server with all the benefits of opensource community, you should definitly have this book...

Running a Linux email server is a non-trivial task. This book does a better job of explaining the major software components than most things I've found but there were a couple of things about it that I found could use a little improvement.

First, the book could use more discussion about issues external to the core pieces of software. Some discussion of configuring MX records, router ports that need to be opened, etc. would be in order.

Second, there were areas, especially in the "securing your installation" section where it wasn't obvious on the first reading that several options were being discussed and you should choose one that was appropriate for your system. A bit of clarification might be in order but the information you need is all there.

Last, I'd like to have seen one or two complete examples. A simple, bare bones one and a complete "all the bells and whistles" version would be ideal.

In general this book is the best I've found for someone who's never set up an email system before. Using it I was able to set up a basic functioning system.

E-mailing is an important communication application for an organization.

At present most of the people use Linux/Unix based OS for building up their mail server. There are various packages available in Linux such as. Sendmail, postfix, qmail etc. Amongst them postfix is one of the most powerful and reliable tools for building up mailing server but difficult to configure optimally. You can probably make postfix work. But there are lots of questions.

-How can you make it work to its full potential?

-How do you make it more secure?

-How can you overcome complex situation when there are multiple servers available?

-How do you make it spam free?

-How can you get instant access of your mail through web mail?

You can get answers to all these questions from the Packt's book, Linux

Email: Setup and Run a Small Office Email Server Using Postfix, Courier, Procmail, Squirrelmail, Clamav and Spamassassin (Paperback). You can get the solutions to your problems easily. There are many examples in the book which make it easier for any type of Linux user to configure the mail server. So, I think all of you would find it interesting to read it. Best

of luck.............................. Uddhap(System Engineer)

Another title from my favorite publisher Packt. However, this book let me down. It is advertised as a practical guide to setting up a Linux e-mail server, it does excel at the advanced configurations and issue that especially those regarding spamassasin, squirrel-mail and general e-mail security. However, this book seems to skim over the the basic yet essential steps. You will probably need to read some internet tutorials to master the basics of an e-mail before tackling this title. Despite its short comings this is still the best single resource that I have found for advanced e-mail configurations.

This book takes you from an IT zero to an IT hero in a such a short book. Definitely worth the buy.