toaster or do-it-myself?

[Roland Smith]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:38:54AM -0400, Identry wrote:
> As part of my server recovery operation, I want to split off my mail
> server onto it's own server. I've never built a mail server before, so
> I'm debating how to go about it.
> 
> The old mail server was built with a toaster, and frankly, I knew how
> to use it, but never understood how it worked. I'm in a hurry to get
> it up, so I'm tempted to use a toaster again, but I'm worried that
> I'll spend a lot of time on it, and it won't work because I don't
> understand what it has installed, etc.

What exactly do you mean with a toaster? I thought toasters only ran NetBSD: 
[http://www.embeddedarm.com/software/arm-netbsd-toaster.php]
;-)

Or perhaps you mean Mail::Toaster (which is based on FreeBSD and uses qmail)?
[http://www.tnpi.net/wiki/Mail_Toaster]
The people who wrote Mail::Toaster can also provide assistance for a fee:
[http://www.tnpi.net/cart/index.php?crn=207]

> I need to use qmail because that's what was used on the old
> mailserver, and all my backups are in Maildir format. I don't have
> time to mess around converting all that mail to another format, so
> that's my one fixed requirement.

A lot of mail servers can handle maildir format. Postfix can use maildir
natively. Sendmail+procmail can also handle it.

On my own machine I use Postfix (with procmail for mail delivery and
bogofilter for spam filtering) because it is so easy to set up. Qmail has a
reputation of being quirky.

But if you need qmail, it is in ports. Have a look which ports are installed
on your current machine. If you install all those ports on the new machine,
copy the configuration files and mail data from the old machine and you are
ready to go. _Assuming_ that all software on the old machine was installed
from ports!

> My first goal is to just get mail working, but ultimately, I'll want
> spam filtering, a web interface, etc.
> 
> So, my question: should I use a toaster? And if so, which one?

Whatever you buy should have enough oomph to handle whatever you want to add
to it later. Especially if you want to run a webserver with php  for webmail.

There are several webmail apps available in ports. E.g. mail/squirrelmail,
which has a lot of plugins available. 

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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