Topic: SMEServer For the Home?

[nwootton]

I've recently downloaded and installed SMEServer 7.3 on an old PC to see if I can use it initially as a family mail server. If this works I'd then like to look at shared address books, calendars etc etc.

While our ISP does allow for different email addresses, it doesn't create individual mailboxes for those users, so whoever downloads the mail gets everybody's! The ISP webmail is also pretty appalling, so using that isn't an option.

Everyone has a unique email address (Nick@ domain.ISP.com & Joanne@ domain.ISP.com) and I have set up users to match these (Nick & Joanne) so that mail can be scanned, anti-spam'd and sorted to the correct mailbox.

How can I set up SMEServer so that it will download the mail from our ISP and do this? Will it also allow me to channel all our outgoing mail back to the ISP when they reply to a message via imap?

Be gentle  - I thought I'd figured it out from going through the docs, but now it's installed it's not playing and I may be forced to go down the Windows Home Server route if I can't get this working 

[Franco]

No individual mailboxes?
What type of ISP is that?

You need to find out if it's really true about the non-individual mailboxes first.

For SME you can install the Fetchmail contrib which will download all the email to each individual user.
For the Outgoing email you can configure the SME to use your ISP as SMTP

[thomasch]

I think what he mean is a multidrop mailbox.

SME support multi drop. Check server-manager::Configuration::Email

thomas

[raem]

nwootton

I suggest you obtain a free domain name from dyndns.com (or register a real one if you prefer).
Then use the smtp server that is already enabled in sme.
You can also use free DNS services at zoneedit.com if required. It depends on whether you have a real domain and whether you have a static or dynamic IP from your ISP.

Just add users and they will have email addresses like
nick@mydomain.dyndns.org and joanne@mydomain.dyndns.org etc


Doing it this way from the start will allow you to easily expand the system and use all the built in features without problems.

Forward existing email accounts to the new domain based email addresses & I would suggest eventually that you stop using the ISP's email addresses, as you won't need them anymore.
You can read email on your server from anywhere in the world using Webmail or IMAPS.

Please read the manuals again very slowly and carefully.
http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:Administration_Manual
and
http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:User_Manual
and the FAQ and linked pages especially the Email page
http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:FAQ
and
http://wiki.contribs.org/Email

You won't need to go the Windows Home Server route, just stick with it and sort out the details slowly.

[imcintyre]

Nwootton

Ray's advice (as usual) is sound. This is what I have ended up at and am very happy with SME.

[nwootton]

Guys

Apologies for the delay in responding, phone company managed to destroy my only line 

Thanks for the pointers, it looks like I will need to go back and play some more and re-read the links provided.

NWootton