SMTP Server

[brisray]

I think I'm having a duh! moment but I'll ask anyway.

I've got my own webserver (Apache on Windows 2000 Pro) and a site already set up. I've also got another site on a host whose account is going to expire in a couple of months.

I'm going to host that site on my server when that account is finished with as well. This site has an email form which is currently run through Bravenet.

What I'd like to do is, when I host this second site is to look after the email myself, but I've managed to confuse myself.

I want people to be able to send the email form to a Yahoo account of mine or better still, my own domain. Do I need to install a smtp server? I've been looking at SoftStack's -

http://www.softstack.com/freesmtp.html

Is there an easier way?

Ray

 

[sedj]

1) What has this got to do with Apache ?

2) If you want to send mail from a web form, you do not need a smtp/MTA server. You just need some code capable of sending email (Most languages support this).

3) If you want to host your own email domain, then yes, you do need a SMTP(MTA) server - and you will need to point MX records from your ISP to your own [static] IP address.

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Free Database Connection Pooling Software

http://www.primrose.org.uk

 

[brisray]

Thanks for the reply.

1) The reason I posted here was I couldn't find a TEK-TIP forum entitled MAIL SERVERS or anything near it.

2) What sort of code do you suggest.

3) I already host one of my own domains. There are ways around having a dynamic address for a web server, I take it the same is true of a SMTP server?

Ray

 

[sedj]

1) SMTP forums : Sendmail, Postfix, Exchange etc

2) Java, C/C++, C#, VB, PHP, ASP etc etc

3) No idea - mail send programs look up SMTP hosts by doing (in effect) this : "nslookup -type=MX domain.tld" - so how that would work with a non-static address, I have no idea.

--------------------------------------------------
Free Database Connection Pooling Software

http://www.primrose.org.uk

 

[brisray]

I seen those, but they are about specific products. I was hoping for general advice. As I run an Apache server I thought it wasn't outside the bounds of possibilty that someone else running Apache also ran their own mail server. I'm obviously looking at cutting edge stuff here.

Ray

 

[sedj]

>>>> I'm obviously looking at cutting edge stuff here.

No need to be sarcastic mate - just trying to help you !!!

Actually, scrub that - I see you're British.

Perhaps you should ask your question in the OS's forum ?
In my experience, most people running Apache are running linux, and the choice of SMTP servers is usually exim, sendmail or postfix. *Most* people running Win32 use IIS - so I think you're probably better off asking in those forums ...

--------------------------------------------------
Free Database Connection Pooling Software

http://www.primrose.org.uk

 

[ericbrunson]

You don't need your own mail server if you have one elsewhere on the net that will propagate mail for you.

 

[Castor66]

If you are running this on a home connection then, more than likely, your ISP will have given you smtp settings for sending mail through their server(s). This would be what you could use.

If all you want is to send mail from this server and you don't have a provided smtp server then you should be able to find a freeware smtp server online somewhere.

If all else fails then stick Microsoft's SMTP server on it but then you get all the MS overhead which you probably don't want.

 

[brisray]

Thank you all for replying.

I'm probably being a numpty (empty headed) over this, I probably didn't ask the question very well. Here's what I want to do.

Someone fills out a form on the site, they hit the send button and it gets sent to my email account. At the moment, the form is normal HTML and in it I've got a line that says <form action="

http://pub32.bravenet.com/emailfwd/senddata.php"

method="post">

My domain address is brisray.com. So being able to send it to brisray@brisray.com without going through Bravenet would be great. Even getting it to my Yahoo address would be OK at the moment.

I don't even know how I would access any mail sent to brisray@brisray.com.

The only person who will be accessing the email would be me but I'd like to be able to send and receive email through brisray@brisray.com

As the server will shortly be hosting more than one of my sites, how would I arrange for it to both send and receive mail from brisray.com and say, docs.com?

Type slowly, and use monosyllabic words if possible - I really am that lost over this.

You're probably right, the post probably doesn't belong here, perhaps one of the Windows forums would be better.

Ray

 

[lgarner]

The Windows Server forums would be better, I think. Windows basically includes a mail transport as part of IIS. You don't need to use IIS, but I think it has to be installed. In Linux, this is like having Sendmail but no POP or IMAP server. Windows can actually receive mail, but there's not a simple way for you to access it.

I'm assuming that you don't have the Small Business edition, and don't want to buy Exchange. Something like Mercury Mail might do what you want, and there's a free-for-limited-use product called "Lan Suite 602" or something like that which has basic mail capabilities. These are just a couple of ideas that I've used.

 

[percent]

(srry I had to do this...form of habit)

You should try a linux server


%, 2004

 

[percent]

I run apache, sendmail, named along with many other services
(linux)

%, 2004

 

[brisray]

lol. I know, Linux users are like that. It reminds me of the Mac/PC thing a decade or more ago. Now I run Macs, Windows and Linux. But even if I run a Linux server I still would have had to post my original query about the email server.

Ray

 

[RhythmAce]

If you know or have used linux, you are in great shape. There are many FREE mail servers for the linux platform. If you have an old box laying around that just can't keep up with the demand that Windows puts on it, then you have a fantastic candidate for a small linux server. If you do a server install, it will not add all the GUI stuff. It will be a lot like the good ol' DOS days. This will free up enough memory to allow your mail, web, ftp or other servers to run much faster. There is a program called webmin that will allow you to admin your servers right from IE on your Windows box. You just type in your server's iport to access webmin i.e.

http://192.168.1.20:10000.

In order to run a mail server, you need to edit your dns records which is usually done through the registrar where you bought the domain name. You need to setup two records. The first is the "A" or Address record for the mail server. Let's say you call your mail server mail.brisray.com. This is nothing more than a sub-domain of your domain. Once you pick a name, assign an ip address. This is the public ip of your server. If you are behind a router, it is still your public ip but you will need to forward all port requests for each server. For example, if you are only running smtp and pop3, then you will want to forward ports 25 and 110 to the local ip of the server. All your servers can be on the same machine because each server will only answer it's protocol. In other words http traffic would be forwarded to the same machine as smtp traffic. Your smtp server will only answer requests on port 25 and your web server will only answer requests on port 80. Getting back to your dns records, now that you have an "A" record for the mail server, you need to create or edit the "MX" (Mail eXchange) record. The exact way you do this is different from one registrar to the other. Basically what you do is fill out a form and say that mail.brisray.com handles the mail for brisray.com. If it has a number, the lower the number, the higher the priority. No need to get worked up over this unless you have more than one mail server. Your next step is to configure your mail server. If you take the one that comes with your linux distro, it will more than likely be sendmail. Some people however, find it easier to download and install postfix because the configuration process is not as complicated. Webmin can help you setup either one. If you have specific questions on configuring either of these servers, there are forums here at Tek-Tips for each.

 

[RhythmAce]

Sorry I forgot to tell you where you can get webmin. You can get it from

http://www.webmin.com

 

[brisray]

Thanks, that was what I was looking for. I was hoping to use Windows as that is what I'm more used to, but as all this is going on a new machine I may as well learn a bit more about Linux as well.

Ray

 

[percent]

I would recommend RedHat 9 for the version to use
(Its free so you can't complain about the price)

%, 2004

 

[RhythmAce]

Oh - good point. There are distros such as RedHat, Fedora and mandrake that use RPM. With many distros of linux, you will need to compile packages from source before they can be installed. RPM is a package management system that will install packagename.rpm packages automatically. It also comes in very handy when you want to remove one from your system. Many people while trying to learn linux don't want to let go of Windows. Their solution is to have a dual boot system. This is where you can choose which OS you want to start at boot up. Linux can setup the boot loader for you at install and use any amount of free space on the drive to create the linux partitions. This is not a good idea for servers though because the OS the server is installed on needs to be running. I suggest that you get your mitts on an old box and get Fedora Core 3. You can check it out at

http://fedora.redhat.com

 

[RandyRiegel]

Sorry if this has been answered above and I missed it. But the answer to question number 3 about being able to have a dynamic smtp server is YES. I have qmail running on my dynamic DSL account. I'm using zoneedit (

http://www.zoneedit.com)

to manage the DNS. I have a cron job on my Linux server (which I'm sure windows can do to) to update my DNS settings every 5 minutes. The only thing is if my modem looses power and has to reconnect it may take at the most 5 minutes for my server to update DNS records when it recieves a new IP.

Randy

 

[brisray]

My current server, Apache on Windows 2000 does that too. I use

http://www.everydns.net/

They provided a utility that sends the IP address. I wrote a small batch file and used the Scheduler to run it every couple of minutes.

If I thought about it a bit more, it was pretty obvious that I was going to have to do this on the new box as well.

Ray