Setting up a mail server

I'm having a bugger of a time understanding the mechanism of mail serving.

I have a website. It's a basic information portal for my town.
I'm serving it myself off of my Linux box; Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc...

Now I would like to offer a basic web-based email account service like this one:

http://newwow.wowmail.com/email/scripts/loginuser.pl?EV1=10548250972911460
http://newwow.wowmail.com/email/scripts/joinuser.pl?EV1=10553698115031363
(I'm posting these url's strictly as examples of what I'm after)

There are zillions of these types of web-based email services out there, so it shouldn't be that difficult to set up.

I have Postfix, IMAP, Squirrelmail.
All of them seem to be up and running ok, but at this time, I'm really just winging this.

I can access Squirrelmail's login page, but no access to creating an account. So it's impossible to create email accounts, let alone loging in.

I expect I'm missing some vital details here.

Any suggestions would be most apreciated.

I am a fan of neomail by Ernie Miller. I think it will give you all the features you want and is quite easy to set up. And if you need help setting it up just post your questions here. http://neomail.sourceforge.net/

Now to add users for just mail do something like
useradd -d /dev/null -s /bin/false runamok

this will create a user that has a shell login of null and no false as there home
Good luck

Hi pc,
that worked. I'm in.

Thanks!

Neomail is nice, but I'm all set up for Squirrelmail now, and my enthousiasm for internet technology is waning fast.
I'm at the point where if I could swap my website for a fishing lodge with no electricity, waaaay off in the wilderness somewheres, I'd do it in a flash.
So I'll stick with Squirrelmail for now.

I tested Squirrelmail with the new user I just created, but it won't send or receive mail.
So I'll go through the settings again.

Strange that email accounts have to be created as UNIX users.
Must have something to do with Postfix.

It would appear that there is no "Create an email account" facility, for website visitors, like those in the url's in my previous post.
Does that require another application?/module? over and above Squirrelmail ?
(Oh God! When will it all end...;-)

I can email out to anyone from Squirrelmail, but I can't receive any mail.

Look in your sendmail.mc file. in that file you will find a line that says this.

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')

This line only lets it get mail from itself. Change it to

dnl DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')

then restart sendmail

/etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail restart

I use Postfix.

I looked for something similar in Postfix's "main.cf" file but couldn't see anything I could make any sense of.

Is this the problem you are having?
http://www.postfix.org/faq.html#bogus

No, I use version 1.1.11

Also, I get no messages from Postfix.

I also get no messages like: "Mail undeliverable...bla bla bla" from my web-based email accounts when I send an email to my server.

Here's something I've been thinking about:
Before I made my website public I got a static IP number from my ISP so I could work on my Apache.
Then, when the site was ready, I got the domain name from some reseller who, at my request, forwards(points?) my domain name to my IP number.

Is it possible that an email sent to my server simply cannot find the @mydomain.com address ?

I have a funny situation which I've seen before with other websites where, when my domain name is entered in the browser's address bar, it changes to my IP number when my site is reached.

I wonder if this might not have something to do with the email not reaching my server?

Yes! they have to change the MX record also.

MX stands for mail exchange. You see you can have your webserver answer on one IP and have a different server for your mail. If you want a little background on DSN check out my little tutorial http://codewalkers.com/tutorials/24/1.html

Ok, I'll study your tutorial and see what I can do.

Just a couple of questions in the mean time:

"...they have to change the MX record also."
Who exactly should change the MX records? The registrar or the ISP ?

"...you can have your webserver answer on one IP and have a different server for your mail"

My Apache listens for the IP#/port#
Postfix is configured to send from "www.mydomain.com" and to receive on "mydomain.com"

Is there any way that my problem could be solved by way of some special configuration in Apache and/or Postfix ?
Like maybe by way of an alias ?

Question "...you can have your webserver answer on one IP and have a different server for your mail"

Answer Yes That way another machine can grab mail while your machine is down then deliver it when your machine is up. Did you ever get an email that said something like mail undeliverable but will try for 5 days? that was the secondary MX answering. Cool Eh?

Question: Who exactly should change the MX records? The registrar or the ISP ?

Answer: Who ever is handling your DNS usally your ISP. If you are using one of the forwording services I don't know how they work. I don't like them. On my co-located servers one of my boxes is running my own DNS but i realize most don't have that luxury or are afraid of DNS for some reason.

DOn't forget any changes to DNS entrys can take 24 hours plus to propagate

"...another machine can grab mail..."
So we're talking about 2 physically different computers here? Right?
Not 2 different servers, like Apache and Postfix on the same box?

re: DNS
I have bind running. I just haven't had the energy/motivation to get it going.
Or I should say, to learn how to configure it.
I should, shouldn't I?
(Oh God! When will it all end...;-)
I had dangerous thoughts about fishing lodges over the weekend.

Yes, I kid you not mail can be answered by a completely different machine in a different country,

I'm looking into this.
Hang tough, I'll get back to you.