Suggestions for mail

I haven't played with Zimbra in awhile, but I've noticed spam/virus filtering to be the most resource-intensive part of handling e-mail. If that's the case with Zimbra, offloading that to another service (e.g. Postini) could reduce its footprint a bit. However, Postini is $1/user/month, which is more than a Linode 1024.

Since (I believe) Citadel serves out IMAP, you could use Roundcube or something else for the actual end user interface and just use Citadel for internal admin stuff.

I like Citadel. You could use SquirrelMail with it. We use Evolution and the Google Email (not Gmail) client on AndroidOS. Really any IMAP client is fine.

hoopycat: does your redaction signature mean that you suggest people should or should not include their domain name in a post, just curious?

I suggest people should include their domain name in a post, especially with mail-related problems. If someone is having trouble receiving mail, the first thing I'm going to want to do is test and see if it's one of the usual forehead-smackers :-)

My tests are usually something like:

$ dig +trace example.com mx
(check for sensible delegation/NS records, see if the MX record is there)
$ dig example.com mx
$ dig example.com soa
(see what I've got cached)
$ dig +trace example.com
$ dig example.com
(check the A record for example.com)
$ dig mail.example.com   (or whatever the MX says)
$ dig www.example.com
(do they imply they just have one linode?  if so, make sure the IPs "match")
$ whois 192.0.2.1
(is it a linode IP?)

Then it's time to start sweet-talking the SMTP server…

$ nc mail.example.com 25
<<< 220 framboise.example.com ESMTP Postfix cause I speak of the pompatus of love
>>> HELO blah
<<< 250 framboise.example.com
>>> MAIL from: <rtucker@hoopycat.com><<< 250 2.1.0 Ok
>>> RCPT to: <asdfasdf@example.com><<< 504 5.5.2 <blah>: Helo command rejected: need fully-qualified hostname
>>> URMOM
<<< 502 5.5.2 Error: command not recognized</blah></asdfasdf@example.com></rtucker@hoopycat.com> 

… you get the idea.

Sure, I can ask "so, what does it look like when you do 'dig +trace domain.com mx'?", but… well, that takes a loooong time. Especially when it turns out their local ISP blocks port 25 outbound and that's the whole problem…

Ok I see, that makes sense, thanks.

Thanks for the replies - I'll be sure to include the "URMOM" command on my SMTP server to save you trouble while debugging my installation.

jebblue: do you use the citadel frontend? Have you found a theme that doesn't look like it's from the 90s?

I ssh tunnel in to use the ugly web interface in Citadel only to do admin stuff, not on a regular basis. If I want to check my mail from other locations or from my Android phone, I use secure IMAP which is built into Citadel.