Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5


This guide will show you how to setup an email server accessible using a POP3, IMAP or web browser client. It will also show you how to include virus scanning and spam tagging in the mail server. If you have an existing Active Directory or LDAP infrastructure, the last section will show you how to integrate it into your email server so you won’t have to maintain two sets of user accounts.

How to install Linux

You can use either Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 or CentOS 5. RHEL 5 can be purchased from Red Hat and comes with support. CentOS 5 on the other hand can be downloaded here.

NoteTo simplify our administration tasks, log in as the user root and specify your root password. This is not the recommended way of administering a Linux box, but for the tasks at hand it is the most efficient way.

How to install SMTP, POP3, IMAP and Webmail service

Postfix will be providing the SMTP service, Dovecot will provide the POP3 and IMAP service, while Apache and SquirrelMail will provide the Webmail service.

How to create mailboxes, aliases and distribution groups

How to add antivirus and antispam filtering

We will be using Clam AntiVirus for virus scanning, SpamAssassin for the spam tagging and MailScanner to integrate them into Postfix.

NoteYou can greatly reduce the volume of spam and viruses reaching your mail server if you are willing to give up something. If you are willing to have your mail delayed (time), install Postgrey. If you are willing to spend (money), get the Barracuda Spam Firewall.

How to integrate Active Directory/LDAP

Integrating Active Directory/LDAP into your mail server will turn your Linux email server into a lean and mean Exchange like machine. And you won’t have to deal with Linux system accounts or edit configuration files for common tasks like creating mailboxes and mailing lists. And finally, you can provide your users with standard address book.

getent passwdUsing Winbind to integrate Active Directory user accounts.
Another way to integrate Active Directory into your mail server. I highly recommend using the virtual user solution above instead of this one.

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Fedora Directory Server is an enterprise-class open source LDAP server for Linux. This page will show you how to setup the Fedora Directory Server.

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This page will show you how to setup an LDAP address book using OpenLDAP, an open source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.

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SMTP Authentication (SMTP Auth) provides an access control mechanism that can be used to allow legitimate users to relay mail while denying relay service to unauthorized users, such as spammers.

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The Postfix Cyrus SASL support is used to authenticate remote SMTP clients to the Postfix SMTP server. Thanks to the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) in Linux, we can configure Cyrus SASL to delegate the authentication process to an Active Directory server.

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LDAP authentication is available in Dovecot starting version 1.0. Since Active Directory is an implementation of LDAP directory services, we can use the LDAP authentication to authenticate Dovecot against an Active Directory server. But for users of Dovecot prior to 1.0 or those having problems with LDAP authentication, we can instead use the Kerberos authentication mechanism in Windows via the Linux PAM.

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This guide will show you how to integrate Active Directory/LDAP into Postfix and Dovecot. In this page, you will learn how to enable Postfix to lookup email addresses in LDAP and how to enable Dovecot to authenticate to an LDAP server.

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This page will show you how to join your Linux server into the Active Directory domain, how to integrate the Active Directory user accounts into the Linux user accounts and how to authenticate users in Active Directory using Winbind, a component of Samba.

ImportantA better way to integrate Active Directory into your Linux mail server is by using Postfix’s Virtual User Accounts.

NoteSamba is installed by default when you select the Server installation type during the installation process. In case you need to install or reinstall it, just add the Windows File Server package located in the Servers category using the Package Manager tool.

Setup and Configure Winbind

Authentication1. Click System, select Administration and click Authentication. This will launch the Authentication Configuration window.
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This page will guide you in configuring MailScanner, ClamAV and SpamAssassin to work in Postfix. Before proceeding, please make sure that all of the above components are already installed.

Here are the installation guides for the above components.

SpamAssassin is included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and CentOS 5 and it’s ready to go out of the box. Just add it using the Package Manager tool if you haven’t done so during installation.

Configuring MailScanner

MailScanner Config1. Edit the file /etc/MailScanner/MailScanner.conf
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Installing and setting up Postfix SMTP Server in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 or CentOS 5 is easy. Postfix has secure default settings so we just need to open it up a bit.

Install Postfix and Mail Transport Agent Switcher

Package Management1. If you did not add postfix and system-switch-mail-gnome during the CentOS installation, you can add it now using Package Manager tool.
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