I consolidated a mail server today. Previously, I was using a separate computer as a mail server for certain websites that I host, but since I’m going to have to be shutting that machine down I decided to move that server to the same server that runs the websites–that server also hosts this site. So now, everything is running on one box, which will make it easier if things need to be moved in the future.
I already had a mail server running on this machine, but it didn’t do virtual hosting, which some sites need so they can have their own POP3 accounts rather than just aliases. Instead of moving everything from the old process to the new on, I decided just to run both and bind them to their own IP address. The old server is exim, and for the new server I’m running qmail with vpopmail to do virtual hosting. I like vpopmail for the web based administration interface that it has, and because it supports a MySQL auth module. Along the way I also had to switch from using inetd as my internet daemon to xinetd. Xinetd is so much nicer, don’t ask me why I wasn’t using it before. The reason I had to switch was because inetd wouldn’t let me bind qpopper (my pop3 server) to an IP address.
Computer science students and their open source software.
It took me about six hours to setup this mail server. For some reason now I’m tired. But I should get rested tonight because tomorrow I have a busy day meeting with various people.
Oh… Suzie, I think this post counts as my most computer “babble” post to date. 
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