How difficult is it to run your own email server?

[Darrin Chandler]

On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 08:36:55AM -0700, Mark Phillips wrote:
> 1. How difficult is it to maintain am email server? 
> A couple of articles/forums recommend using a third party for email
> since keeping an email server secure is hard and a takes lots of time.
> Keeping on top of all the types of attacks and exploits people come up
> with, and then install patches to prevent them from taking over your
> server and using it for nefarious activities is a full time job. Is this
> true?

For your needs it is NOT a full time job. If you spend some time picking
the tools you'll use and then check the history of the distro to see how
well they maintain those packages you'll probably see that keeping up to
date is not too hard.

> 2. What combinations of MTA, MDA, MUA's do people use?
> I have run across several articles that combine Postfix, Courier or
> Dovecot, and SquirrelMail or Qmail, MySQL, ClamAV, and SpamAssassin.
> Which is better (i.e. easier to install & maintain) Courier or Dovecot?
> What other combinations are better? How much time does it take to keep
> all these pieces secure?

You're opening a can of worms. There are people using all manner of
software in various combinations. Some will tell you horror stories
about whatever they're not using. And the worst part is it's all true
and everyone is right.

That being said, I believe dovecot is easier out of the box than
courier.

> 3. How much hardware do I need?
> I plan on using the funambol server for syncing the blackberry, and that
> requires a P4, 1.8 GHz, 200 MB disk space, and 512 MB of RAM. How much
> more do I need for email? Could my email server fit on the same machine
> or a separate machine? The funambol server is a J2EE application (tomcat
> & mysql) (http://www.funambol.com/).

For a few users your hardware needs will be quite modest. That depends a
lot on what all you put in the chain. SpamAssassin + ClamAV + whatever
will use a lot more resources. If you can use greylisting then that will
block most of the spam up front and allow you to use a heavier email
stack on the back end.

General advice: running a small email server is not a full time job and
is entirely practical. But it's not a decision to be taken lightly. It
will involve a fair amount of time to learn your way around, get all the
pieces working together, make sure you're not allowing relaying, etc.,
etc. After you get everything working you really, really need to keep up
to date with patches. Keeping up to date is not hard, and not time
consuming, but it must be done. IOW, this is a small committment, but it
IS a committment.

-- 
Darrin Chandler            |  Phoenix BSD User Group  |  MetaBUG
dwchandler at stilyagin.com   |  http://phxbug.org/      |  http://metabug.org/
http://www.stilyagin.com/  |  Daemons in the Desert   |  Global BUG Federation