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At some point hitherto, Tim Lyons hath spake thusly:

> Of course, with a mailserver comes all the associated tasks involved
> in ensuring it is secure and not an open relay (especially if you 
> want to bounce mail off it when traveling).  

If you use a newer distro to build your mail server, you'll prolly
find that it is already configured securely.  In fact, on some
distros, it will (by default) not accept mail from anywhere but
localhost, so you'll probably need to fix that.  You will, OTOH,
prolly need to figure out how to KEEP it from being an open relay, if
you travel and need to be able to relay mail off your server. At least
with sendmail, this can be tricky.  You'll probably have to figure out
SMTP Auth or some such.

I solve that problem by using ssh to access my mail system remotely,
and running my (text-based) mail client (mutt) locally on my home
machine.

> You should also consider implementing secure means of
> authentication/transfer for external mail access.  

SSH + mutt (or any other text-based mailer) works great.  You CAN use
graphical mailers too (as long as both sides of the connection
understand the X protocol in some form), but these will be SLOW.

> AntiVirus scanning of mail should be another consideration - it
> saves me a lot of headaches with the family.

You know, I've never used anti-virus software, and I've never had a
system infected by a virus.  I solve this problem by 1) not reading my
mail with any Microsoft product, and 2) deleting any mail with
attachments that a Microsoft product might consider executable.
Actually I'd do the same with Linux-executable attachments, but I've
never received one, despite the fact that most of my friends and I use
Linux exclusively or almost exclusively...

This technique may not work with your family (many people find
auto-executing or clicking on executable attachments irresistable),
but if you follow the above policy, I can almost guarantee that you'll
never get an e-mail-borne virus.

- -- 
Derek Martin               ddm@pizzashack.org    
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