wiki:howto/MailServerTutorial

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continued development of the original document

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Tutorial for the setup of a mail server using MacPorts software

  • Audience: Advanced setup of Electronic Mail
  • Requires: MacPorts >= 1.9.1
  • Created: 31 July 2010; Revision: 31 July 2010

Introduction

Despite its simple seeming exterior, Electronic Mail is a complex interaction of multiple different pieces of software from many sources. Fortunately, MacPorts has made the porting and installation of these parts "easy."

Decisions made by the System Administrator (i.e. the person installing the software) control the various features available for mail delivery, mail reading and system maintenance.

This document represents an attempt to describe a step by step process to convert OSX Snow Leopard (1.6) into a mail server for a Home user(s) or Small business. It attempts to gather into one location information which is useful or necessary to accomplish this goal.

The goal here is to create a system which utilizes MacPorts and native Apple software so that the resulting system becomes as "automagically" self-maintaing, and as immune to "gotchas' caused by Apple system updates as possible.

See also the Fetchmail -> Postfix -> Dovecot for additional discussions and perspectives on the process.

A list of Home pages for the various products used can be found at the end of this document:

Why did I write this?

Even though I've been a Unix System Administrator for over 30 years and have done this many different times, every time I do it on a new system, I find that not only do I have to start over again from scratch because the technology has "changed" but that I have to keep trying to find my "old notes." .... :) And, invariably, I find I have "forgotten" to do something "FIRST" necessitating to start over again.

This document represents "my favorite" Electronic Mail tools. All are "Open Software" of one form or another -- most under the GPL - ​http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

There are other options available.

Installation

Step 1: Do a little planning

For a starting definition of terms and concepts.... ​http://wiki2.dovecot.org describes Dovecot V2.0 -- including an excellent "Generic information about mail servers!"

An excellent graphical depiction of the Electronic Mail process can be found at: ​http://workaround.org/ispmail/lenny/bigpicture

Consider the software functionality which you might want to provide and the software necessary to install (AND maintain).

  • MUA - Mail User Agent aka Email Client - used by the end user to read their mail.
    • Apple Mail - mail readable from a single location or
    • Webmail - mail readable from any location via a web browser.
  • MTA
    • Postfix
    • Sendmail
    • Fetchmail
    • qmail
  • MDA - Dovecot / Procmail
    • POP
    • IMAP
  • SASL - authorization
  • Spam Assassin - Spam Scan

OSX 10.6 contains an installation of Procmail. This version can be utilized or disabled and replace by the MacPorts install. This document will describe the MacPorts installation of Procmail.

Similarly, Apple Mail provides functionality similar to FetchMail and Spam Assassin.

Configuration

Where are you going to put things...? Most everything can be put where MacPorts wants to put them with no problem. The only item of particular concern is the location of the mail spool, as this could become potentially large and one might want to place it on a separate disk.

Similarly, by configuring log files to be in the

Optional Parts

  • SASL
  • Spam Assassin
  • Clam Antivirus

TODO: What else can be done?

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