Mail Server

The Jacksonville Linux Users Group Inc. operates and relies up its own mail server providing Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Secure (SMTPS), and Internet Message Access Protocol over TLS (IMAPS), located in Atlanta, Georgia. The mail server runs Gentoo Linux and has been in continuous operation, in various locations and hardware since coming online in 2000; including clones that no longer exit. Originally, running Cobalt Networks Linux (discontinued), then RedHat, pre-RHEL, and finally, transitioning to Gentoo around the time of the birth of Fedora, circa 2003. The email servers configuration and settings have been migrated and updated since 2000.

The server is in the process of domain name transition, with no estimated time of completion.

Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy

The JaxLUG runs Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy (ASSP) for DNS software, on the front lines to defend against any unwanted mail, solicitations, spam, viruses, worm, etc. ASSP has been in use since 2004 and has been the single most effective solution, its extremely rare for unwanted mail to breach, but does happen on rare occasion. ASSP is open-source software under the GNU General Public License that is developed by Thomas Eckardt in association with the ASSP community and for more information please visit ASSP's project or Wikipedia pages.

As its name suggest, it is just a proxy and ASSP is responsible for handling SMTP and SMTPS services, which include, authentication before SMTP or SMTPS; only authorized senders can relay mail. The actual processing of SMTP mail takes place later. ASSP is potentially the most effective software of its kind!

A bit of history, in fact, it was in the JaxLUG ASSP first was made know in this post on the JaxLUG mailing list from Tom Allen on June 30, 2004. How things come full circle, but as that list shows, ASSP was used before when JaxLUG was hosted on William L. Thomson Jr's former private cloud. There are many postings over the years regarding ASSP.

qmail

qmail is a mail transfer agent (MTA) that runs on Unix, Linux in our case, and it was written, starting December 1995, by Daniel J. Bernstein as a more secure alternative to the popular Sendmail program, once again originating in a paper. We actually run one of the later patched variants netqmail, but the base qmail was last released in 1998. It has never had a security vulnerability and is one of the best performing SMTP servers. ASSP hands the proxied SMTP or SMTPS connection over to qmail, which does the rest, queues, sends, returns to sender on bounces, and other MTA functions. For more information please see qmail's Wikipedia page.

Daniel J. Bernstein is a cryptologist, computer scientist, and more with his own Wikipedia page and arguable one of the sickest domain names ever, cr.yp.to!

In the world of electronic mail, a SMTP/SMTPS server is akin to the post person, the person who delivers the mail, and if you are sending mail, the person who collects and delivers, rinse and repeat.

ezmlm

For our mailing list, the restored heart and soul of the JaxLUG since 1996, we run ezmlm, Easy Mailing List Manager (MLM) software that is also written by Daniel J. Bernstein. ezmlm is meant to be paired with qmail, and they play nicely together. ezmlm handles all aspects of our mailing list, and for information on joining please see our interact with us mailing list page, and for more information, ezmlm's Wikipedia page.

dovecot

Dovecot logo

Dovecot is an open-source IMAP and POP3 server (we only use IMAP/IMAPS) for Unix-like operating systems, written primarily with security in mind. Dovecot's slogan, The Secure IMAP server. Dovecot is also a high performance IMAP server, with unique replication abilities for having fleets of IMAP servers via its command dsync, which is similar to rsync, but this is for mail. Dovecot is open-source software under mostly MIT and LGPLv2 Licenses and for more information please visit Dovecot's official or Wikipedia pages.

M In the world of electronic mail, a IMAP/IMAPS server is akin to a post office box, the place your mail is stored, and the difference in POP3/POP3S vs IMAP/IMAPS is IMAP/IMAPS keeps all mail on the server, unless explicitly pulled locally. This is ideal for having multi-device access to email, and is common for most email platforms. POP3/POP3S is when you take the mail from the P.O. box, rather than storing it there for multi-access. In many cases, such as in our instance, POP3/POP3S service has been discontinued, leaving just IMAP/IMAPS.