[SWLUG] Hosting?

[Dave Cridland [Home]]

On Sun, 2003-03-16 at 22:44, Than wrote:
> Hello there!
> 
> I've just bought a domain and i'm wondering if is possible to to my own
> hosting on the Linux PC.

Yes, you simply need a permanent connection, ideally with a static IP
address, and some form of consent from your service provider (some
service providers don't allow hosting, either at all, or of commercial
sites, some don't allow customers to host mail services without checking
their setup, etc.).

Beyond that, it simply depends on what you wish to host. Primarily,
people seem to want to host mail and web.

Linux is perfectly capable of hosting both these services - indeed, the
BBC host their news services on Linux/Apache, and more ISPs than I can
count host both on Linux.

For web, you're really looking at Apache - it's very stable, reasonably
fast, and very well used.

For mail, it's slightly different - not only do you need to pick which
MTA (SMTP server) you want, but also the MDA/server-MUA you want.
(Assuming we're all conversant with the split MUA model, where half the
MUA is on the server, and the "client" speaks POP3 or IMAP4 to it. In
other words, normality.).

MTAs most used seem to be:

Sendmail, the classic, which can do *anything*, but is generally best
avoided unless you really know what you're doing and, in addition,
really need it.

Exim, which does 90% of what sendmail does, but does it faster and
easier to setup, apparently. I've not used it, though, for no good
reason.

Postfix, which does 95% of what sendmail can, but does it faster and
easier to setup (most packages of postfix I've seen handle this very
securely.) This is my personal choice of the moment, although I've used
sendmail a lot more.

QMail, which isn't technically open source, like the rest, and is, in my
opinion, very restrictive in what it can do. It's very fast, but only
usable if you and the author agree on how your email should be handled.
I have not used this in the field, simply because I generally want to do
things differently to DJB. I've told him this, he told me I was wrong.
*shrugs*.

Server-MUAs most used appear to be:

UW-imap, which is one of the two IETF reference servers for IMAP. Uses
standard UNIX mailboxes, so no special setup is required at all, but, I
find, more smarts are needed for the user reading the mail are needed
instead. Doesn't interfere with POP3 servers, so you can pick one of
those separately, although one is provided.

Cyrus IMAPd, which is the other IETF reference server for IMAP. Uses its
own weird mailbox format, so you have to read your mail through IMAP or
POP (which it also supports). It's a little trickier to setup, but, in
my opinion, well worth the effort, as it's blindingly fast, and supports
pretty well every extension to IMAP in existence. My personal choice of
the moment.

Courier, which is usually IMAP compliant, but sometimes not. I refuse to
use this on the grounds that it claims compliancy, has known compliancy
bugs, and the author refuses to fix them, claiming the standard is
"wrong". Works well with Qmail, though, since it operates on maildir
format mailboxes.

Qpopper, open source from Qualcomm (Eudora folk). POP3 only, operating
on standard UNIX file formats. Heavily extended, full featured POP3.

There's a whole bunch of other POP3 servers, all operating on standard
UNIX format mailboxes, as well. All of these have the same
inefficiencies as the UW-imap and Qpopper implementations, which is
basically that they all have to read the entire mailbox into memory to
work on it. You can write one yourself in about fifteen minutes in Perl,
and join the club, it's not difficult.

Personally, I'd set up postfix or sendmail, with Cyrus, take the time to
get it right, and install Squirrelmail for webmail services. (I'd put in
an ACAP server too, of course, since I'm perverse like that. There's no
benefit to you, though, yet.)

Dave.