Successfully installed the mail server. That's the last of the drudgery. Should be pretty smooth sailing from here.

[root@ash ~]# qmailctl stat
clamd: up (pid 1957) 54 seconds
imap4: up (pid 1945) 54 seconds
imap4-ssl: up (pid 1953) 54 seconds
pop3: up (pid 1961) 54 seconds
pop3-ssl: up (pid 1949) 54 seconds
send: up (pid 1947) 54 seconds
smtp: up (pid 1955) 54 seconds
spamd: up (pid 1964) 54 seconds
clamd/log: up (pid 1958) 54 seconds
imap4/log: up (pid 1960) 54 seconds
imap4-ssl/log: up (pid 1954) 54 seconds
pop3/log: up (pid 1962) 54 seconds
pop3-ssl/log: up (pid 1952) 54 seconds
send/log: up (pid 1946) 54 seconds
smtp/log: up (pid 1956) 54 seconds
spamd/log: up (pid 1959) 54 seconds

- jim 2-11-2006 10:18 pm

I didn't actually say "smooth sailing", did I? I think that is pretty much like saying "Please kill me now."

Multiple issues yesterday and this morning, luckily all of which I was able to figure out. At one point I even thought I lost all of the "data" I have already uploaded onto the big array. Turns out it was just something incredibly stupid and all the data was there. I won't go into my crazy theories I came up with to explain the supposed data loss - including that I was hacked. Note to the paranoid - don't believe what nmap tells you about open ports if you are scanning a box behind ISP or data center firewalls.

So it's been a little frustrating, but also satisfying because I was able to work through all the issues. I guess you learn by having problems. Or, you'll have problems until you learn. Or something like that.

In any case I am getting more confident. Not that there won't be issues, but just that I will be able to figure them out given enough time.
- jim 2-13-2006 6:08 pm


Wow. The mail system I installed is a whole suite of programs. It's based around Qmail. Administration seems very easy. I am really impressed. Setting up domains and adding users is easy. The logging features and MRTG graphs are extensive (and really cool!) The webmail interface, while not particularly attractive, is very functional. And although I haven't dug in too deep, the mailing list features seem incredible too. Great great great.

I am finding that all of the web front ends to admin tasks are written in PHP. That's another advantage to feeling at home in that language - so many things are written in it. So if there is a problem you can go in and fix it. Maybe.

The issues I have had so far are because the scripts are expecting register_globals to be on (this is a php.ini thing.) No thanks. So I have it off, but then sometimes you have to go into these scripts and find where to put $_POST[' '] around the variables coming in from web forms. Pretty simple, but no doubt difficult if you don't know PHP and aren't aware of this whole register_globals thing.

Just for the record: the admin-toaster script at /usr/share/toaster/htdocs/admin/index.php needs to have this change made in order to successfully change the admin password. This is the offending line:

print_change_passwd($oldpasswd, $newpasswd, $newpasswd2);

Should be:

print_change_passwd($_POST['oldpasswd'], $_POST['newpasswd'],
$_POST['newpasswd2']);

Anyway, I am pleased with the setup. Just sent and received my first email from the new server. Now I am ready to start moving some active domains over. I think I will start with datamantic.com. I will get it ready and then probably make the dns change over the weekend so that the couple of people who have mail accounts there won't be disturbed during the week.
- jim 2-13-2006 9:29 pm





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