Experimenting intermittently with mail server software for OS X lately and thought I had settled on Post.Office. At first seemed like it was going to be cake to set up, despite the butt-ugly 1982 design of the config UI. But after my IPs / hostname / domain changed, all hell broke loose. It became impossible to get into the http config and its daemon started chasing its tail in a CPU-chewing loop after following a tech support person’s suggestion to change my hostname. This morning woke up to find the machine grinding at a crawl and a bunch of rogue post.office processes limping along.
Uninstalled with extreme prejudice and set up CommuniGate Pro instead. Configured in minutes with half dozen birdhouse addresses for friends and family, relay blocking and SMTP-Auth set up just the way I wanted it. Slick. Had looked into the built-in sendmail and the qmail alternative, but I just don’t have the time or inclination to wrestle.
So now we’re in full swing with OS X as a multi-purpose home file server, print server, music server, web and email server. Speakeasy provides connectivity, ZoneEdit does the DNS, and the Mac does the rest.
Scot,
Been ages since I’ve read your blog; must remember to do so more often. OSX is indeed amazing. Everything just gels so well — easy apache/sendmail/samba/misc serving, AND it’s everything you’d ever want from a desktop. Definitely the best OS I’ve ever used…
CommuniGate certainly looks impressive, but $500? Isn’t that a bit steep for home use? Is there a less expensive license for non-commercial use?
You got that right. I’m looking into ways to license it more affordably. But it’s already saved me so much hair-pulling and is so feature rich I’m tempted to just pay it – it should earn back its cost before long as I do more hosting.