Installing qmail and vpopmail

11 Mar 2004 09:24 qmail

My mail server runs qmail. This is the first of a multipart series showing how I went about installing vpopmail for virtual domain support.

Introduction

My webserver, on peculiar.differentpla.net is configured for virtual hosting. Among the different websites that it hosts are differentpla.net and beerology.net.

It also manages email for those domains. Unfortunately, the email system is not set up to allow virtual hosting. This means that any email to (e.g.) fred@differentpla.net gets delivered to the same place as fred@beerology.net. Now, this might not be a problem if the user accounts referred to the same person. Even here, fred might want to keep the two accounts separate.

peculiar is running qmail to handle email. Since it’s running my “production” email, I’m going to install a test box to try all of this out on.

Requirements

This is what I want out of the mail server when I’m finished:

  • Separate virtual domains, so that fred@differentpla.net and fred@beerology.net are delivered to different mailboxes.
  • POP3 support, so that my girlfriend can download her email to the desktop PC.
  • SMTP AUTH support, so that I can send mail from my laptop from anywhere.
  • IMAP support, so that I can access my mail from my laptop anywhere.
  • Forwarding. A couple of user accounts on this box are forwarded elsewhere. This must continue to work.
  • Mailing lists (using ezmlm).
  • Webmail, so that I can access my mail without my laptop from anywhere.
  • Virus/spam filtering.

The test box

Because peculiar is currently handling my “production” email, I don’t want to accidentally break it while trying out all of this new stuff, so I’m going to set it up on a test box.

For this, I’ve dug up my girlfriend’s old PC (a Pentium-200), which should be adequate for this test system. On it, I’ve installed Debian GNU/Linux v3.0 (woody), which is the same version as running on peculiar. The machine is called flimsy.

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