Re: [LI] Setting up a mail and webserver

[Suresh Ramasubramanian <r.suresh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

---:Long Howto:---

> the problem is that how do i set the mailserver. supposing 
> that the domain name

OK - basically you want to set up a webserver and a mailserver.  There are
two things you can do - and here is the best option IMHO.  See
http://www.local.net/~jgo for a good, basic guide to all this.

Rent space on a server somewhere stateside (do it directly - most of the
people here will charge you a 200% premium sometimes).  You can get 10
megs of webspace and unlimited forwarding addresses for anything between
$15 - $50 per month.

The domain name will cost $70 (for the first two years) and $35 per year
after that (these are rates at http://www.networksolutions.com - there are
other registries now, which offer cheaper registration fees).  

Have a US Dollar Credit Card (not the local "pay in Rs, spend US$" variety
but the genuine one (say your principal's bro in law who's in the states
<G> - as payment for the domain name can ~only~ be made by credit card,
and several webhosts insist on credit card payment.

You get telnet and cgi access (but not root access) plus lots of services
(mysql, php, etc etc) preinstalled.  Also, they provide DNS and bandwidth
(with 99% uptime guarantee, daily tape backups etc) for your website,
which is quite convenient :)

Try http://www.superb.net or http://www.icom.com - these are the "cheap
and best" variety and offer these options above, plus excellent email
support.

All these forwarding addresses can be used so that mail sent to
foo@xxxxxxxxx gets redirected to your college's internet account (say
vsnl).

>From there - use fetchmail + procmail to route incoming mail to different
logins on your server.

You can schedule a cron job to dial into the internet periodically (at off
peak hours - say midnight) to fetch incoming mails and pass it to the
users on your lan.  

Sent mails can be queued on your LAN's linux server and sent as soon as
you connect to the Net (right after running fetchmail in the above cron
job).  

To queue mails on the linux box - set o HoldExpensive=true and set
FallbackMXHost=your.isps.smtp.server (say md3.vsnl.net.in or
mail.satyam.net.in) so that if your linux box's sendmail can't deliver the
mail it will pass it for relaying to your ISP's smtp server.

To send mails you can :

1. Let your users telnet into your linux box and use Pine (or whatever) to
send mails (BITS Pilani, IIMB etc do this).  Remember to set the hostname
properly (and set a global config file for PINE) or you'll start sending
mails as root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - replies will, naturally, never reach
you <g>

2. Use Eudora Lite on windows 95 with the scripts available from
http://guide.vsnl.net.in and http://www.mahesh.net to retrieve mails from
your linux server - XLRI Jamshedpur does this.  Actually, these Eudora
Lite scripts are meant to retrieve mails from the vsnl shell acct - so
hack them a little.

3. Run ipop3d and give your users POP access so they can retrieve mails
using any pop3 client (Outlook, Pegasus Mail etc) - AFAICT, XIM
Bhubaneshwar does this.  

All mails get downloaded to the user's hard disk and deleted.  Or use imap
so that mails reside on your lan and are read from the LAN itself.  Most
mail clients (Outlook, Netscape etc) support both POP3 and IMAP.

You already have a domain name and you can send and receive mails using
that domain name.  No need to send mail using your ip address.

------

Or else - there is always option 2 - get a .ac.in or .ernet.in domain
(from http://sangam.ncst.ernet.in for more details) for free.  This means
that you have to keep a linux server permanently online and provide DNS,
run your own web / ftp / mail servers.

OK - you get root access to your box but the issues are - 

1. Keeping your box up 24x7 on a dodgy ernet / vsnl connection (perhaps
with old and buggy sendmail and uucp, antiquated routers etc etc).
Bandwidth is very very scarce in India and your server will be down /
unreachable quite frequently.

2. Running all services - from DNS downwards, routers etc etc for your
server.  Getting out of bed / running out of your classroom because of a
router failure / server crash or whatever is a beautiful learning
experience, but a major hassle.

3. Plugging all security holes on your box - once you get a box with a
pipe to the internet, rest assured some spammer / hacker or the other will
sooner or later find and exploit any security holes you have (sendmail,
smrsh, ping, syn etc etc).

-- 
Suresh Ramasubramanian     | CAUCE India
r.suresh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx   | suresh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.india.cauce.org | Stopping Spam In India
	You spamma my mailbox, I nukea da ass


--------------------------------------------------------------------
The Linux India Mailing List Archives are now available.  Please search
the archive at http://lists.linux-india.org/ before posting your question
to avoid repetition and save bandwidth.