Many businesses want to run their email servers on Linux, but getting started can be complicated. The attractiveness of a free-to-use and robust email service running on Linux can be undermined by the apparent technical challenges involved. Some of the complexity arises from the fact that an email server consists of several components that must be installed and configured separately, then integrated together. Unlike other approaches that deal with one component at a time, this book gives you a basic knowledge across all the server components, leaving you with a complete working email server for your small business network.

Based entirely on free, Open Source software, you will see how to protect your server from spam and viruses, offer web access for remote access, and secure your installation with regular backups.

What you will learn from this book

- Setting up and running a Linux-based email server

- Key information about installing, configuring, and using PostFix, Courier, SquirrelMail, ProcMail, ClamAV, and SpamAssassin

- Securing and protecting your installation from viruses, spam, intruders, and hardware failure

Approach

The book takes a practical, step-by-step approach to working with email. We start by establishing the basics, so that your users can send and receive their email in their favourite email client. We then move on to look at providing web access, so that users can access their email out of the office. After this we look at the features you'll want to add to improve email productivity: virus protection, spam detection, and automatic email processing. Finally we look at an essential maintenance task: backups.

Who this book is written for

This book aimed at 'unofficial' sysadmins in small businesses, who want to set up a Linux-based email server without spending a lot of time becoming expert in the individual applications.