Re: how to setup email server

[Oommen Thomas <oommen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 16 Sep 1999, Mehul Jhaveri wrote:

dmotors> Can any one help in building up email server at my site.
dmotors> 

Sure.

dmotors> How to register domain name ?
dmotors> 

Is it a .in domain or a .com/.org ?

If former, go thru your ISP (VSNL/Satyam..) and indirectly contact NCST
Bombay who have to do the registration for you.

If .com/.org, till recently the sole nodal agency was InterNIC at
http://rs.internic.net. There has been some restructuring now and the US
govt has permitted 3/4 other players too in the regn field. The said site
is now available as http://www.networksolutions.com.

In either of the above cases, what you need is to select a free domain
name and register it by filling up a form citing the Billing/Zone/Admin
Contact details. In the US case, the payment obviously has to be in $.
To my knowledge, the bill will come to the email-id of the Billing Contact
within a week or so (the regn will be thru in a couple of days even before
the payment is made) and then you make the payment.

In both these cases, apart from the details of the domain and the contact
details, you need to spec two IP addresses - these are the nameservers
which will host (ie carry details of) your domain to be registered. For
this to work these two servers will have to be registered as 'hosts' with
the registering agency.

For name resolving to work, the designated nameservers must have the
'named' software (if under Linux) running with the necessary config files
for the said domain and having a seprate entry for each sub-domain-name you 
need. eg. abc.domainname.com, xyz.domainname.com. In other words, if you
register domainname.com, you are free to define the sub-domain-names (or
rather the names of each individual system you want in the domain).

dmotors> from where to purchase web space for email services ?
dmotors> 

Not clear..

dmotors> How to setup Email server ?

There is a doubt here.
How are you connected to Internet.
All the above is easier if you have a leased line.
Else you need to depend on somebody who has one.

If you are going to use (Redhat) Linux, then setting up the mailserver
with minimal functions will work almost out of the box. You need two
things.

1.  In the nameserver settings for the domain you register, specify the MX
(mail server) host as the IP address/name of the system where you need the
mail to be delivered.

2. In the file /etc/sendmail.cf of the mail server, add the line 

Cw domainname.com

to receive mails addressed to domainname.com on the mailserver.

There are lot of other features/settings possible in email (sendmail
software) and the professional way is to generate a .cf file from a .mc
file using the m4 preprocessor so that the meta-config-file will be
hardly a page long compared to a very lengthy .cf file which is very
difficult to maintain. 

The above description is only the bare minimum to start with. It is
assumed that you have access to a leased line and thereby a (set of) 
static IP address(es). Else things will change and you need to use things
like UUCP to pick up mails from some friend of yours who is ready to host
your mailserver over a leased line.

Only this much details can be given based on the limited things you have
said about your setup.

Going into details of the config etc is out of scope of a discussion in
the list and some O'Reilly book will be the best bet.

If you need more help, feel free to contact me or the list. Best of Luck.
That's the spirit of Linux and Free software.
Otherwise, you wont get these consultancies free....
As the popular deja news site says "Share what you know, learn what you
don't".

Regards,                                              Imagine Technologies
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