[commercial] sendmail setup request

[Polytropon]

On Sun, 08 Jul 2018 14:22:14 +0530, Mayuresh Kathe wrote:
> i own a domain (kathe.in) for which email services are provided by the
> domain registrar itself. email services include imap, smtp and webmail.
> 
> the problem is that i lean more towards using mailx under bsd and at
> the same time also wish to have my mails stored online (or rather
> non-locally).
> 
> i might be wrong, but i have concluded that the best and also the most
> economical solution would be to go for either rootbsd or digitalocean
> using a freebsd instance and run sendmail to provide email services in
> and out of the instance.
> 
> and now comes the real bummer, i don't have any idea about how to setup
> sendmail to allow the above.

I don't want to sound impolite, but did you ask yourself if
you're asking the right question here? Maybe I didn't fully
understand your goals, so allow me to ask:

1. Do you want to stay with your domain provider as the "keeper
   of the mail" and just want to be able to use xmail instead
   of a (usually annoying) webmailer?

2. Are you prepared to run your own mail infrastructure? Do
   you want to provide the "all and everything" yourself,
   usually POP3 + SMTP + IMAP + Webmail?

If no. 1 is fine for you, have a look at local IMAP mirroring.
There is still one problem, though: The program mailx (just
like the system's native mail command) uses mbox for storing
messages. IMAP mirroring tools usually use MailDir. Sure, you
can convert between the two, but it's additional work.

For an example of an IMAP mirroring tool, check out OfflineIMAP.

No. 2 is more difficult to deal with, that's for sure. Running
your own infrastructure and having your peers properly interact
with it (!) isn't as easy as it was decades ago. "Reputation",
anti-spam, anti-virus, encryption and certificates, "score",
all this needs to be done, along with installing, updating and
of course properly configuring the services you need.

Even though I'm initially a "sendmail person", nowadays I tend
to suggest Postfix. It's a lot easier to work with, and the
integration of tools for IMAP or for a webmailer is also quite
convenient. There's plenty of documentation, but it usually
assumes that you are at least familiar with basic concepts of
mail operations. And there are decisions ahead because there
is no "the ONE setup", as almost every functionality can be
provided by more than one software product that is available
on FreeBSD.



Here are a few resources:

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/postfix-courier-imap-mysql-and-freebsd.19470/

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/imap-installation.8396/

https://www.freebsddiary.org/dovecot.php

http://www.postfix.org/BASIC_CONFIGURATION_README.html

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PostfixBasicSetupHowto



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...