Mail server at home.

piggydude

I wonder if anyone can offer some advice regarding a home mail server/print server.

The setup:

I’ve got a laptop and two desktops running at home, all networked via an ADSL router. What I’d like to be able to do is to read both new and historic e-mails from any of these computers.

I’m thinking that one of the PCs should operate as a mail server (and if I connect the printer to it, a print server too), but I’m not sure what software I need to achieve this. The PC will still have to operate as a standard Win XP machine too.

Ideally, I want the lowest cost option that will get the desired result.

Any ideas?

Thanks

snowboardjon

This is the sort of thing that Linux is ideal for, but as you've stated that you need the server to act as a standard Windows XP that doesn't help much.

You could try looking at some IMAP server software for windows (sorry don't know of any windows based ones to recommend). Then you can set the server to download POP3 mail from your ISP and serve it to your home PC's as a mailbox.

fabbers

Maybe take a look at hmailserver it's free and can collect mail and with a little jiggory-pockery can have a webmail front end as well.

http://www.hmailserver.com/?page=functionality

woo

why don't you use imap email account, that way you can keep email on the server and access it from both machines.
Or you could use a mail client that leaves a copy of each mail on the server, then you have copies backup in 3 places.
To set up a mail server properly you'd have to get a domain and sort the DNS out so that it points to your IP address and if you don't have a static IP address it just isn't going to work.
Using a PC as a print server is pretty easy, just set up printer sharing.

MercilessKiller

snowboardjon wrote:

This is the sort of thing that Linux is ideal for, but as you've stated that you need the server to act as a standard Windows XP that doesn't help much.

You could try looking at some IMAP server software for windows (sorry don't know of any windows based ones to recommend). Then you can set the server to download POP3 mail from your ISP and serve it to your home PC's as a mailbox.

??? Afaik exchange can run Imap so all you need is server 2003, exchange 2003 and your sorted... did i miss something?

EDIT: I see the op wants to run xp - not sure but i think exchange 2003 will run on xp?

woo

why the need to run a mail server at all though?

fabbers

Exchange 2003 will not run on XP, also the OP was asking for low cost solutions rather than hundreds of pounds for an exchange setup for 2 users!

Yeah this kind of thing could be sorted by using an isp that provides IMAP mailboxes but i got the inpression the OP wanted to set this up as kind of like a mini project.

albertross_2

You could have a look through some of these:

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/

Personally it seems a lot of trouble, for not a great deal of benefit.

piggydude

Thanks for the replies.

It looks as though the simplest solution is to get an IMAP e-mail account, so I'll investigate that first. Failing that, I'll try one of the free/cheap server applications on my spare PC and see how I go from there.

Cheers

Astaroth

You will want software that can pull mail in from another POP mail account rather than a true IMAP server as for this you must have a static IP address, an ISP that allows you to run servers from your connection, DNS setup to send email to your IP and accept that the computer and internet connection is always on as if it is ever turned off or connection lost then you would lose any emails sent during the outage/ turn off.