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[OCLUG-Tech] November meeting -- dealing with server setup

For the November meeting, I'll be presenting an overview of how I set up a server
to provide some fairly simple functions for a domain name I've had since 1996. This
mostly went well and will serve as a prototype for the planned movement of tux to a
similar VPS -- our hardware is a decade and a half old! The focus will be on trying
to keep the process straightforward. I've written up details separately, though in
some cases the "why?" could be added.

In the process, I've had quite a lot of trouble with postfix leaking spam, and
I've been learning some aspects of reading logs and configuring postfix. While
I've made progress, it seems that a 21 year old email address I'm relaying
to Gmail is the remaining conduit (though I could be mistaken), and the spam is
actually being sent to that address. We're at the point of abandoning the particular
username, but a first try still failed. There may have been a lot of crud in the
queue when postfix was restarted. Given I'm a novice in this area, I'd welcome
some help in preparing and/or presenting this aspect.

In particular, I believe members could appreciate a review of how to read mail
(and possibly other) logs to find problems as well as an overview of the issues
facing mail handling.

For the record, I've found lots of material on the net, but there seem to be
different approaches and distinguishing what is current information and correct
from out of date or simply wrong is not trivial. Also there are recipes, but the
reasons for particular settings are not always explained. This is an opportunity
for a short tutorial, and I'm prepared to write/edit such a document.

Please get in touch off list.

Cheers, John Nash

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