Webhotel questions (mailserver, stats...)

[Rói]

Greetings,

I am playing with the idea of starting a webhotel. Though I've always been a Windows guy, about a month ago a friend of mine gave me a copy of Linux Fedora. I installed it on my server, and I was sold. I have thaught myself much Linux since then, and I'm now ready to move on to the next stage.

Now, the biggest challenge for me, is to get a proper mail environment up and running. I would like to offer my clients the possibility to administrate their email accounts online (create new accounts), and access the email accounts online (Squirrel mail perhaps?).

I have done some research on the subject, and what seems to be the best solution, is a mailserver called qmail, which a tool called qmailadmin (I think) can be used with. Is this the way to go?

Can Squirrel mail be used with this server? Does qmail support imap, or just pop3?

Also been doing some research on getting some kind of free tool to show website statistics for each site. Came across a tool called awstats. Tried it, and it lookes good, but maybe there are other, better solutions out there (ones, that make use of the website logfiles)?

Edit: btw, is Fedora the right/best distro anyway for a webserver?

All info much appreciated

Thanks & regards

Rói Højgaard
Linux ethusiast

[kkubasik]

fedora is fine, they are all about the same at the core, for something on one machine, gentoo will probably give u the best performance. A mailserver is possibly one of the most complicated servers to get working in a production enviroment, but heres the basics.

You will need a MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) this is what qmail is along with postfix or sendmail (you just need one) but qmail is probably the easyest to confiugre of them all. This will delive the mail to a local directory, that can then be accesed with a pop3 or imap program. The MTA also provides smtp services.

The squirrlmail interface acts no different than a standard mail client, it just works through the web.

Another piece that might be nice is fetchmail, this will pull e-mail from another accounts pop3 or imap server and pass it into the local mail dir, making it possible to have all the users accounts in one place.

As far as seting up remote admin (creation?) or new accounts, the best bet would be something in php or a cgi that contains all the info, just waits for approval from you or another mod/admin, this prevents scripts from creating 5000 accounts and clogging your database and connection.

If you want to know more, please post back, I will try to come back later tonight to make this post a little more comprehensive