Need to build a new mail server

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Thu, 29 May 2008 15:52:21 -0400, Jerry McAllister <jerrymc at msu.edu> wrote:
> On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 01:35:27PM -0400, Patrick Baldwin wrote:
>> Hi all, I've got an older Solaris system running Sendmail for my
>> mail server right now.  It's about time to replace it, and I'm
>> thinking FreeBSD might be the best choice of OS for the replacement.
>>
>> I've only got about two dozen users, though they are all very heavy
>> users of email.  I'm using IMAP, and I'd like to continue to do so.
>>
>> Finally, we have quite a few aliases I'd want to port over to a
>> new server.
>
> Given that, a FreeBSD system could be almost a drop-in replacement.
> Sendmail should be the same or very nearly so (depends on the version
> you are using now and the nre version).

Nice finger-slip in 'new/nre' :)

I fully agree that FreeBSD+Sendmail should be an almost drop-in
replacement for Solaris+Sendmail.

> Aliases should work just the same.  Your only differences might be in
> where some things live.  But, check out the hier(7) man page in
> FreeBSD.  It documents the FreeBSD directory conventions.

Patrick, Jerry is right.  If you are comfortable with Sendmail on
Solaris, you should be pretty ok with the base system version of the
same on FreeBSD too.

Moving the aliases is probably just a matter of copying over the aliases
from Solaris to `/etc/mail/aliases' and running `newaliases'.  That's all.

> There are other MTAs and other utilities available to experiment with.
> But, if you are comfortable with sendmail, there is no reason to
> change.  It is mature and very functional; does what you need.  A
> modern machine with FreeBSD 7.x should handle large numbers of Email
> users - even heavy users.

An old Intel Pentium at 400 MHz handles the email traffic of all local
users (several dozen) and many mailing lists, in one of the domains I am
affiliated with.  It also runs MailScanner and spamassassin. Relatively
modern systems can go a very long way :)