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  • Choice of mail server?

    I have been having intermittent problems with my mail server.
    I am using Mercury Mail and it has largely been working fine, but I have had it hacked once to make it an open relay and now it has lost all the config settings. It's an odd program which works fine when it works...

    I am considering using something else.
    I have half a dozen local mail accounts together with a forum that generates mail. This is sent though my smtp server. Mail is stored in my ISPs POP3 boxes and are then retrieved by the server, stored locally and then accessed.

    I need the server largely because of the forum. It is also nice connecting to the accounts via IMAP which then allows remote access on various devices.

    I use my ISPs pop3 boxes because I don’t want mail bouncing if my server goes down.

    I have toyed with using exchange which is know is overkill, but the last time I looked it didn't support POP3 boxes. I have been recommended Merak and I am looking though the documentation for that.

    Any suggestions?
    The Welsh support two teams when it comes to rugby. Wales of course, and anyone else playing England

  • #2
    Originally posted by Paddy
    ...but the last time I looked it didn't support POP3 boxes.
    Do you mean accessing the Exchange mailboxes via POP3 or downloading messages from a remote POP3 mailbox into Exchange? Either way you it will do it

    Zimbra is a possibility but I'm not sure if it can download from remote POP3 mailboxes or not
    When you own your own business you only have to work half a day. You can do anything you want with the other twelve hours.

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    • #3
      I mean downloading from a remote pop3 box from my isp into echange.
      The Welsh support two teams when it comes to rugby. Wales of course, and anyone else playing England

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      • #4
        I have managed to get Merak working beautifully. Now just one more hurdle
        The Welsh support two teams when it comes to rugby. Wales of course, and anyone else playing England

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        • #5
          Is it possible to set a primary and secondary mail server in DNS records?

          I would prefer to use my mail server as the primary server, but I need some redundancy in case it does down (which it does).

          I would like mail to be redirected to a secondary server (my ISP) if the primary is unavailable. Is that possible by altering DNS records?
          The Welsh support two teams when it comes to rugby. Wales of course, and anyone else playing England

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          • #6
            I don't think so. You can use MX records to have mail servers outside of your network decide who they need to talk to, but I'm not aware of anything for setting your mail clients up for that.

            Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

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            • #7
              Perhaps I wasn't clear.
              I was hoping to modify the MX record so that mail servers would try to send to the primary mail server first, but if there is no response, then it sends to the secondary server.

              Does that change matters?
              The Welsh support two teams when it comes to rugby. Wales of course, and anyone else playing England

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              • #8
                Yup. That's pretty much exactly what MX records are for. Unfortunately, I can't write them very well.
                Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

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                • #9
                  A primary point of confusion is how the priority system works for MX selection. The relative priority of an MX server is determined by the preference number present in the DNS MX record. When a remote client (typically another mail server) does an MX lookup for the domain name, it gets a list of servers and their preference numbers. The MX record with the smallest preference number has the highest priority and is the first server to be tried. The remote client will go down the list of servers until it successfully delivers the message or gets permanently rejected due to an unreachable server or if the mail account does not exist on that server. If there is more than one entry with the same preference number, all of those must be tried before moving on to lower-priority entries.
                  Cheers for the link. Looks like I can do it
                  The Welsh support two teams when it comes to rugby. Wales of course, and anyone else playing England

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                  • #10
                    So. All I need to do is to create a new entry and give it a higher priority than the other mail server.

                    The current records have entries for mail.bushe.co.uk, which doesn't exist...
                    Perhaps the ISP has entered them by default.
                    The maill server that my host uses is mail.freedomnames.co.uk perhaps that translates to one of the A records??

                    Odd.

                    Any thoughts?
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                    The Welsh support two teams when it comes to rugby. Wales of course, and anyone else playing England

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