newbie here: set up Home email server

Linux has SendMail built in or you can download it. It's not as friendly to setup as a windows based system like VPOP3 or IMail that you can get from http://pscs.co.uk or http://ipswitch.com

If you try to setup SendMail I do have some text files that I used as cheat sheets to help setup accounts and domains. I have since moved to IMail on Windows. I can also setup your domain on my IMail Server. Email me if you would like that option.

Probably the easiest way to go would be just to use Sendmail, since it's usually the default MTA on most Linux distrobutions. Since you'll be hosting your own mail/web and not using an ISP, you'll have to manage your own DNS records. Zoneedit.com will host DNS records for 5 domains for free when you sign up. It's fairly easy to do. I use zoneedit for my DNS records in addition to no-ip.com just in case my IP address from WideOpenWest changes. So setup your records like www.whatever.com, mail.whatever.com, femail.whatever.com and associate them to your IP address (hopefully it's static). Host records need IP addresses, but MX records can be pointed to whatever.no-ip.com or a static IP, whichever is more convenient to you. On your router/firewall, open port 25 and forward it to your linux box. If you will be using webmail, you will open port 110 as well and I highly recommend SquirrelMail. There's a lot more involved but this should get you started. Good luck.

One tool you could use to ease certain administration details is webmin. It has modules for sendmail and qmail. You can also setup DNS if you want to with this.

For the mail side you would need to pick your MTA. Like was said before sendmail comes with most Linux installations.

Next you'll need the imap server. The only one I know about is Cyrus. The web site has configurations for both sendmail and postfix.

For web interface. Squirrel mail will do. If you wanted some more advanced features such as group calendaring, etc. You could take a look at http://www.opengroupware.org.

Another thing to consider very seriously, is that hotmail and yahoo and possibly others, block known residential IP's from sending mail to hotmail and yahoo clients. And your email server doesnt get it bounced, hotmail just devours these emails and never forwards them.

Sendmail is the default on some distros, but not all (SuSE defaults to using Postfix). Sendmail is the oldest and most well know MTA but isn't necessarily the best out there. I would suggest checking out whichever MTA your prefered Linux distro supports the most and going with that.

Also along the lines of Answer 4, keep in mind that Hotmail & Yahoo are not the only e-mail providers that do this. Some regional ISPs are starting to do this as well; so if you run your own mail server, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to send e-mail to other people. I've also seen some ISPs refuse to send e-mail to mail servers located on residential IP addresses, so you might not get your mail either.

first of all u need to install MX records on DNS server for buiding a public mail server. after that u can install ur own managed mail server which can be accessed from word wide. fro more info on HOW TO LINUX MAIL SERVER look at

http://www.siliconvalleyccie.com/linux-hn/sendmail.htm

for further help reply me.