They are very public on how they do things and they have published a blogpost on how they run their mail servers. It’s a very good read with lots of tips and links to services and solutions that if you run your own mail server are very useful. Things like having reverse DNS entries (a must), domain keys and more are explained. Follow their advice if you want your mail server to actually deliver most of it’s email.

It’s still not complete as there is much ground to cover to get it all done and a personal life that has a tendency to interfere with my ambitions

As told earlier the new structure means installing everything in “/usr/local/” so that security and regular updates won’t interfere and we can upgrade without worrying if everything will still work afterwards.

Under the skin I’ve also started re-arranging the pages so that there is a more logical structure. You will notice that in the URL’s. You can find the updated documentation here:

http://diymacserver.com/snow-leopard/

I’ve read the recommendations on Lion and it looks like it will be 64 bits from Lion onwards. This means that I can skip the 32 bit instructions which is very welcome as it means less testing.

Last week I also renewed my contract with Macminicolo and added another 2 years hosting with them. Their service during the last 3 years is excellent and I’ve asked them to find me a newer second hand Mac mini to be able to upgrade to Lion on my production server. I’m currently running a CoreDuo mini at their datacenter which in not capable of running Lion. That is the only reason to get a newer mini. In my experience they are almost bullet proof. I still have one of the first G4 mini’s (from 2005) here at home running 24/7 as a test server for Leopard. The only problem I had with it is the hard disk which I had to replace in 2009.

The instructions for the update are available here Updating amavisd-new.

There is no reconfiguring necessary, as this is a bugfix update.

In short his strategy comes down to Time Machine, plus a bootable clone via SuperDuper (or CarbonCopyCloner), plus offsite backup with CrashPlan, plus Dropbox, plus Google Docs. Please add a pinch of hysteria…

Please note that these are my initial instructions using an upgraded machine. Next up I need to test the instructions on a clean install of Snow Leopard. When that’s done I will upgrade my Core Duo mini to Snow Leopard and see how the 32 bits version will work out.

Happy reading: The mailserver on Snow Leopard

Good luck and can you please let me know if it worked for you?

I started digging around for a solution that might work and I found the most simple and elegant solution that was already available in Postfix. It was called submission (port 587) which only allowes access by authenticated users.

To enable this ready made configuration in Postfix you will need to edit the ‘master.cf‘ file in ‘/etc/postfix/‘. You need to uncomment the following lines and save the changes.

submission inet n – n – – smtpd
  -o smtpd_enforce_tls=yes
  -o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes
  -o smtpd_client_restrictions=permit_sasl_authenticated,reject

Then reload the changed configuration files into postfix with the command:

sudo postfix reload

Most mail clients like Mail.app and Thunderbird are able to use this port without any extra configuration. The only thing you will notice that you are able to send email which would otherwise be blocked.

Hope this will work as well for you as it did for me. I’ve also updated the regular documentation set to include this setting. Also don’t forget to open up this port in your firewall/router configuration.

This means no more Courier based products like the authentication, IMAP, POP3 and maildrop apps. Dovecto can do all that with a single installation. I’ve found out that the setup is a lot simpler with a lot fewer procedures and configuration files to maintain.

An last but not in the least, it looks like Dovecot is proving to be an even better IMAP server than Courier was. As I told you in the earlier post it’s a lot faster. While testing it myself I often saw new email appear in Mail or Thunderbird immidiate after thy were received by Dovecot.

Currently the setup only describes the basic setup of a server, I still need to add the DSpam spam-filter in the setup and integrate server based filtering of incoming emails (where we used to use maildrop for). It is all possible but I still need to find out how and document it for you. When that is done I will write the neccesary migration documents how existing users can migrate safely from Courier to Dovecot.

I will keep supporting the Courier product stack for at least a year after I finished documenting the migration instructions. So don’t worry if you don’t switch immediatly. My production servers still run Courier, I only use Dovecot on my test servers. Although there is one user who has already switched to Dovecot (We helped each other in getting this done) because of the performance problems he experienced with Courier IMAP. These problems are now gone and this is one of the reasons I want to move to Dovecot a.s.a.p.

The advise currently is if you want to setup a new server: Use the Dovecot based setup. If you already use Courier please wait untill the migration instructions are finished. If you can’t wait I will try to assist you via email as much as I can but you will be mostly on your own. It’s not that difficult but ou need to know what you are doing.

I hope you like the switch and will be happy with the improved setup. You can read all about it at the new mailserver instruction pages

But as always with MySQL, make a backup of your data before you start messing with MySQL. I try to do my best at offering you a safe instruction set but I’m unable to foresee any combination of soft and hardware you might have installed so it might not work. You can use mysqldump, phpMyAdmin or any other tool you might use.

Alright, backup ready! Here we go…

First download the new 5.1.x packages, at the time of writing that would be 5.1.34. Download the appropriate package for your platform from the section called: “Mac OS X (package format)”. Then from the bottom section called “Source downloads” download the “Compressed GNU TAR archive (tar.gz)” package.

When you are ready you need to stop your current installation of MySQL, but because we made it foolproof and unstoppable (it will restart automatically) we need to do some extra steps:

sudo launchctl stop com.diymacserver.mysql
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.diymacserver.mysql.plist

Now the old 5.0.x installation of MySQL is stopped and you have a backup ready and waiting we can continue.

Open/Mount the disk-image of the 5.1.x version you just download and install MySQL from there by double clicking the installer and follow the instructions.

When you are finished continue with unpacking the 5.1.x source archive you downloaded as well. CD into the directory and execute the following commands:

For 64 bits on Leopard:
CFLAGS=”-arch x86_64″ \
CXXFLAGS=”-arch x86_64″ \
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql \
--with-server-suffix=-standard \
--enable-thread-safe-client \
--enable-local-infile \
--enable-shared \
--with-zlib-dir=bundled \
--with-big-tables \
--with-readline \
--with-plugins=all \
--without-docs

For 32 bits on Leopard:
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql \
--with-server-suffix=-standard \
--enable-thread-safe-client \
--enable-local-infile \
--enable-shared \
--with-zlib-dir=bundled \
--with-big-tables \
--with-readline \
--with-plugins=all \
--without-docs

I’m still working on Tiger but my old Tiger based G4 mini has died and I need to revive it again. Sorry

Followed by:

make
sudo make install

Now to restore all your databases we can do two ways: Quick and dirty or clean. Both will work, but you will need to check your users and passwords afterwords.

Quick and dirty:

Copy the data directory from your 5.0.x installation to the new mysql/data directory.

sudo cp -R /usr/local/mysql-5.0.81-osx10.5-x86_64/data /usr/local/mysql
sudo chown -R _mysql /usr/local/mysql/data/*

Clean:
Startup MySQL and import your backup.

To startup MySQL you can just re-enable the lauchd commands:

sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.diymacserver.mysql.plist
sudo launchctl start com.diymacserver.mysql

All should be fine.

• Building the Postfix mailserver in 64 bits on Leopard
• Building the Courier Auth library in 64 bits on Leopard
• Building the Courier IMAP/POP3 server in 64 bits on Leopard

The configuration of all the components is not affected by this new compilation method so they stay the same. Next up: DSPAM and Maildrop.

I’ve now documented how to add GD (which was one of the most requested modules) and mcrypt (required for a safe use of phpmyadmin).

I’ve documented each module as a seperate installation and it will tell you which parameters to add to the normal PHP installation to make it work. In this manner everyone can select the modules he or she wants without the modules that aren’t needed.

Read more about it on their respective pages:

• Adding the mcrypt module to PHP on Leopard
• Adding the GD module to PHP on Leopard

I hope you like this method of documention this.