Can Sendmail (hpux) be Front Server

[Steven Chen_1]

Hi,

Recently our Win2k based Exchange2K server was crashed and it took days to get the things back. I am thinking about the option of getting emails in/out for the company:

1) Would Unix based server serves better?

2) Would Unix based server get less spammed (we have thousands of spammed mails stopped by Symantec mail filtering server inside the exchange servers)?

3) Would Unix base server be the front server as we have configured now, meaning: it accepts external mails only and forward them to back-end Win2k based exchange server, and people can also use webmail from outside to get http mails?

4) If n/a or n/g, then we use it as a complete front server, meaning in/out mails have to go through it. In this case, what do we need to configure?

Any comments are appreciated.

Steven

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

1) Certainly a properly patches Unix server would be at least as reliable as the Exchange Server. Unix is a more reliable OS(opinion). As to your specific situation, it depends why the Exchange Serve crashed.

2) The Unix server would be spammed as much as any other mail server. How much spam you get is based on how widely distributed your email addresses are in the spam community. There are open source(spammassassin.org) and commercial products that can do the same job symantec was doing.

3) This goal is accomplishable. You can provide webmail from a number of free opensource solutions on Unix. squirrelmail.org is my current choice because it came with my Red Hat Servers.

4) Big Question. To provide spam protection you will need to be using the sendmail tools that ship with the product. This includes /etc/mail/virtusertable,/etc/mail/genericstable,/etc/mail/aliases to set p this server to properly forward mail to your internal server.

A quick example. This assumes the Unix box is exposed to the public Internet and also has access to your internal mail server, which i'll call internal.yourdomain.net

schmobagel@yourdomain.net

gets and email

/etc/mail/aliases is configured after filtering as such:

schmobagel@yourdmain.net: schmobagel@internal.yourdomain.net

This will forward all valid mail to the internal mail server as designated.

The task you wish to accomplish is complex and difficult, but it can be done. It might even be fun.

SEP