[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Postfix Configuration



Although I have stuck with it now for the past 1.5 years and have tweaked things to run ok I ran into memory problems with vpslink/openvz too.

Jeff is right and I didn't know why at the time so I kept messing with it until I decided to move from vpslink-4 to 5 to get up to 1024 memory.

That solved the memory problems until over time I added a few more virtual servers and a postfix/dovecot IMAP over ssl/tls setup.

I tweaked apache and mysql trying to get them to hold back a bit on memory.

Virtualmin and Interchange are PERL based and that eats up memory.

Another issue is with fedora or Centos you you cannot let udev get on your system because that has to be managed by openvz because all the devices are virtual.

You have to place some excludes in yum.conf to keep udev and others from hopping in with updates. This was recommended in
the vpslink forums:
exclude=udev kernel* mkinitrd module-init-tools glibc* gcc* MAKEDEV*

Other people  felt that not having the ability to upgrade the kernel is an issue however the kernel was recently upgraded by vpslink techs and I'm not accomplished enough to mess with the kernel yet anyway.

I started on link-4, upgraded to link-5 and now that my server is up to the following I need to move up to 2 gigs of ram so I need to go to link-6 to get that.

Hope this table shows up properly in the mailing list:

Virtual servers 21  DNS domains 21
Virtual websites 20 SSL websites 4
Mail domains 20 Databases 71
Mail/FTP users 93  Mail aliases 80

I Plan to install a fresh centos 5 server on link-6 and move all the virtual servers over to make sure everything is working and before going live on the link-6 setup then drop the link-5

Fortunately I got in under the early adopter price so moving up to vpslink-6 is still viable to me.

Though at the higher price I have thought about a dedicated server at the following site:
http://www.dedicatedbox.net

Anyone have experience with www.dedicatedbox.net ?

Here is the most active customers site I have on the vpslink-5 server and it operates very well.
This is a heavily moded osCommerce site based on osCMax. http://www.oscmax.com
http://www.theraggedfence.com

Interchange based sites run pretty well too.
http://www.h-s-p.com
and
http://www.liteking.com
the Interchange sites have been stagnant for a while but they purr right along.

I get very few errors now and probably when I move to 2048 memory on link-6 I'll get probably no memory errors.

Not as snappy as if they were on a dedicated server but very usable none the less.

I'm actually very happy with the setup and since virtualmin allows for nightly backups to the Amazon S3 servers I feel fairly secure that if a catastrophic failure occurred I could get everything back up in a reasonable amount of time.

This server stuff is really addictive :-)

-John





ricky@learnautomation.com wrote:
1645.166.217.160.16.1195846524.squirrel@www.learnautomation.com" type="cite">
Thanks for the input, Jeff...  I'll definitely experiment with those
recommendations when I get back home.  You cleared up some conceptual
errors I had.

Before I go too far with this server, I am definitely interested in the
reasons why you set VPSLink aside, and am wondering if you have any
suggestions for better alternatives.  It would be neat to have a VPS box
with an IPV6 address for more experimentation if you know anyone who has
that option available.   This is the first time I've tried VPSLink, and
I'm using the XEN hypervisor.  I tried OpenVZ, but quickly learned (within
hours) that wasn't going to work out for me as well as XEN.

The great thing is that there is no rush for this project.  My company is
currently on a shared hosting plan which will work fine until we figure
out the best route to take.  I'm definitely open for ideas if anyone knows
better options for the price.   I've done a lot of PHP work on the site,
and some of the scripts are slow to run on the current server, so we are
looking for something with "more guaranteed" resources.

Take care,

Ricky Bryce

  
ricky@learnautomation.com wrote:
    
I bought one of the virtual servers at vpslink.com.  I'm very happy with
it, and right now am running Link (package) 2 with 5 Gigs hdd space, and
128 Megs of RAM.  Accessing the server through Secure shell.  The server
is an a LAMP configuration.
      
Hmm.  I was hosted for a while on VPSLink.  If you're interested, I can
tell you why I switched off.

    
I'm trying to take this issue one step at a time, so the first thing I
would like to do is to get postfix to receive mail from
ricky@ethernetgateway.com, and map the mail to the rbryce account on the
virtual machine.  I'm wanting to use separate mailboxes with system
accounts, so I think Aliasing is the way to do this.
      
Sure.  But "aliasing" could mean a few things.  Postfix has a number of
ways to do aliases, some for backward-compatibility purposes, and some
having to do with the architecture of postfix.

Here's a Web page with a list of all the different ways Postfix can
rewrite addresses:

http://www.postfix.org/ADDRESS_REWRITING_README.html

    
Consider a default LAMP configuration with sendmail erased and postfix
and
dovecot installed.  Also, please consider, this is the first time I've
tried to configure postfix.  I do have Webmin installed also, and SSL
enabled.
      
Fedora, I assume?  That could make a difference.

    
If I go to main.cf in /etc/postfix/,

alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases is uncommented

rbryce is an existing UNIX system user (created by adduser)

In /etc/aliases (at the very bottom of the file rbryce:
ricky@ethernetgateway.com exists
      
OK, two problems here.

Minor problem: you usually have to refresh the hash table after editing
/etc/aliases.  Some distros provide the "newaliases" command, or you can
do "postmap hash:/etc/aliases".  Then, "postfix reload" so it notices
the new files immediately.

Major problem: the aliases entry you gave directs all mail for the local
user "rbryce" to "ricky@ethernetgateway.com".  It sounds like you want
the exact reverse.  But, as I mentioned before, /etc/aliases is only for
local usernames, so you can't use /etc/aliases for this unless you want
"ricky@<anything>" to go to "rbryce".

    
I've used the command postconf -e "virtual_alias_domains =
ethernetgateway.com
      
 >
    
and

postconf -e "virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual"

To create a map database, I've typed

postfix /etc/postfix/virtual
      
Sure (well, I'm sure you meant to type "postmap" here"), but what did
you put in /etc/postfix/virtual?

If nothing, then I suspect this is where you're going wrong.  This is
the file where you tell postfix that "ricky@ethernetgateway.com" is the
local user "rbryce".

    
(restarted postfix)

When I go to yahoo, and send a message to my ricky@ethernetgateway.com
address, I am not getting a bounce.

When I su to rbryce on the server, and type "mail" I get "no mail for
rbryce" when I would have expected to receive a message.
      
Not sure what's going on here (unless Yahoo spam-filtered your bounce).
  The mail logs should help.  I think it's pretty common to have a
/var/log/mail.log; if not, and nothing else looks right, check the main
log (/var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog), and as a last resort check
/etc/syslog.conf for hints as to where those messages might be going.

You'll want to figure out where those logs are going at any rate; if you
run your own mail server, those logs will be your salvation on many
occasions, at least if you're anything like me.

    
If anyone could point me in the right direction I would appreciate it...
Or even recommend a good web document, it would be appreciated.  Maybe I
have some conceptual errors as to how to configure the mail.  Once I get
postfix running right, I'll be happy with this server.  (I'm happy
already!)
      
Postfix's web site, postfix.org, is pretty good.  In particular, this
might help:

http://www.postfix.org/VIRTUAL_README.html


-
To unsubscribe, send email to majordomo@luci.org with
"unsubscribe luci-discuss" in the body.

    

-
To unsubscribe, send email to majordomo@luci.org with
"unsubscribe luci-discuss" in the body.