Re: Running mail and web servers on UNIX

Hello Guy,

welcome to the James mailing list and a happy new year 2025.

I do have my opinion about using Windows as an server OS - but with a 
good admin I don't see much differences.
Do I recommend James as your primary mail server - YES - but it also 
comes with some shortcommings:
Most Linux services require some sort of sendmail - either sendmail 
itself or wrappers from exim or postfix. So although you can use James 
as your primary server you have to provide some implementation of 
sendmail or have to connect it to James.
I like to point out my guid from last january: 
https://lists.apache.org/thread/h96qbl975cof7474f4ybn2q1nhwbgk7f
And although it's outdated and doesn't match my current setup anymore it 
should give you a good starting point.

As for what to use for a Linux server: You can get away with a low 
speced VPS - you can use a full blown bare metal dedicated root server 
with dual cpus and some accelerators like a GPU or NPU.

What I'd like to point out: No matter what you use - make sure to secure 
it properly and apply security patches ASAP. I got my James twice by not 
applying to patch for the Log4J security issue when it became available. 
Also make sure to have a strict firewall: block everything that's not 
supposed to be exposed to the public wild internet.
I've setup my firewall to redirect traffic from TCP/25 to TCP/8025 so I 
can run James as non-root user.

Also an advice: depending on your skills maybe first get familiar with a 
VM first before deploying a maybe not working setup. Nothin hurts more 
to have your mail service no longer working due to messed up config.
Unfortunately the current version of configs lack a lot of decumentation 
present in early 3.x versions. Maybe look them up on github. It takes a 
bit to get them working right and secure.

Don't hesitate to ask - we're happy to help to get your setup up and 
running properly and secure.

Have a nice week.

Matt


Am 20.01.25 um 20:59 schrieb Jean Helou:
> Hello guy,
>
> Tough question :D
> I think linux is very suitable for running james but not mandatory, james
> runs on the JVM and should be able to run anywhere a JVM runs. It certainly
> makes running james in a docker container quite effortless.
>
> I am personally playing with cloud based solutions, my very low traffic
> james MX instance runs on a 3 core VM with 4Gb of RAM.
>
> I hope this helps a bit
>
> jean
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 20, 2025 at 5:11 PM <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>>
>>
>> I am sort of giving up on Windows and looking to move my mail/www server
>> to UNIX.
>>
>>
>>
>> Would you recommend using James on a Unix system (or other mail servers),
>> and which Unix flavor would you recommend for reliability? Also, what do
>> you guys use as an affordable and reliable workstation for running Unix
>> mail and web servers?
>>
>>
>>
>> Kind regards, Cordialement,
>>
>> Guy
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *Guy Tremblay **MBA MSC*
>>
>> Head, Research and Development
>>
>> m. 514-709-6458
>>
>> [email protected]
>>
>> 200-4388 Rue Saint-Denis #801 H2J 2L1 | Montreal, QC
>> *https://welnx.com* <https://welnx.com/>
>>
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