CIMG0806, originally uploaded by nedrubwerd.

I apologize for writing so much about this. It seems like it’s so unimportant to other people but right now it’s the only thing going on. It’ll eventually stop.

So to follow up, I looked at how hard it would be to implement virtual email hosting on this server. It’s not easy and I’m not doing it. Eventually I’ll get access to another computer and install Zimbra on it. That’ll do email. Virtually, too, I hope. It could just be that Exim is a real pain to get to do what you want it to. There are so many drivers and routers and conditional things you have to do just to have mailboxes in ~/imap of a domain owner’s user account. I do realize the system spool directory is important, and even that’s still used on a system under DirectAdmin. I don’t even know why I’m worrying about it. I certainly don’t plan on having many people on this server, so there’s little to no chance of a user name or email address colliding. Am I overreacting?

Tomorrow, Zach Dean’s site gets moved. This should be fun.

One thing I still can’t figure out is how to get Exim and Dovecot to differentiate between domains when accepting email. For example, of one were to send a message to drew@safetyguy.us, it would go to me. Although that’s cool and I get a free ride on other people’s domains, that’s not really the desired behavior. One of these days when I have some free time, I’ll dig through the configuration files on the server we have at Alphatek with DirectAdmin installed, which seems to do virtual email hosting quite flawlessly. I also still have yet to get SpamAssassin working with Exim, at least in the same way it works under DirectAdmin.

All this manual stuff is just the precursor to me studying for my RHCE certification. If I know my way around a Linux system, I can get the little piece of paper that says I know my way around, and then Eric wouldn’t seem so jumpy when I step in the server room or mention Linux. I personally think something like this is exciting and I don’t see myself giving in to any sort of control panel on any of my servers anytime soon. I like DirectAdmin and all because it’s really easy, but that’s in a case where we’re being paid to host web sites and quality is key. Since the only people on my server are me and my buddies, I’m sure we can deal with some experimentation. Right?

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Update 1: While writing this entry, I deleted a user (and its home directory) that had been moved to another server. Since I have httpd set to reload every minute, and a VirtualHost node pointed to that user’s home directory, Apache died. Oops. I’m learning, still.