[SOLVED] A place for postmasters to seek help ?

[ychaouche]

I'm new in the electronic mail servers world. Whenever I seek help, I'm not sure whether my issue is with postfix, my webmail, courier or any other component of the chain. I might not be even aware of all the components of a mail system. Sometimes, there are also questions that are horizontal and relate to many of them, so it doesn't fit in any software specific forum. Is there a place for postmasters to ask questions about how to make things ?

[GarryRicketson]

I don't know, but there is a search engine that is really help full for searching and finding something you are looking for or need.
Easy to use , as well.

forums for e-mail server administrators to ask questions

[dasein]

I might not be even aware of all the components of a mail system.

This hunch is probably right. And it tells you where to start looking.

Administering an email server requires some very specialized knowledge. To the extent that you lack that knowledge, then your questions to other email admins will be incomprehensible, and many (perhaps even most) of the answers you receive will seem like gibberish. And in my personal experience (which is admittedly old), there's very little patience in that community for folks who haven't done their homework. They expect you to know the difference between an MDA and an MTA before you post, and "noob" status gets you no sympathy at all.

So before you go looking for a venue to ask questions, your first step is to open up the "black box" of email and peer inside. Cultivate the basic knowledge that you sense you lack. Or else maybe ask your boss(es) to pick someone else for the job.

As with so many things, Wikipedia is a fairly good starting point for such an effort. Good luck.

[alderaan]

An obvious first step is to ask on specialized mailing lists for the software included in your setup. Even if you haven't spotted the problem someone else might point you to the right direction. Another possibility would be usenet. I bet there are more than one newsgroups in which subscribers talk about these things for example there is comp.mail.list-admin.software but I didn't check to see if there is any life in there!

[ychaouche]

Thanks a lot for all your feedback.

I have compared various documentation sources. So, far, the best resources for me were, in this order : info pages, how-tos, the stackexchange network, forums, blog posts from technical people (not the monkey see monkey do type of posts like the many you can find on howtoforge for examples), mailing list archives, and man pages. The least helpful resources were wikipedia and howtoforge / e-how.

The first resource I turn to for help is usually the manual page if I'm dealing with a particular command, google otherwise. Often times the manual page is not sufficient, so I turn out to other resources.

There's this forum emailquestions.com which specializes in the field, but it seems like there are only 3 or 4 regular posters there, so it's not really helpful for the moment.

[edbarx]

As with so many things, Wikipedia is a fairly good starting point for such an effort. Good luck.

The least helpful resources were wikipedia and howtoforge / e-how.

As a rule I do not even consider wikipedia as a reading resource since university educators discourage their students from using it and quoting it in their work. The reason my seem unjustified, but avoiding to waste time and effort over vandalised information is.

[dasein]

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... ow#p598027

[geekosupremo]

Donno if it will help much but this is a really good break down of the essential parts of an e-mail server and how to configure them. --> https://workaround.org/ispmail/jessie

The main thing I learned is, it's a whole lot of moving parts ... that I don't want to mess with ... yet.

[ychaouche]

ISPmail... sounded a lot like ISPConfig, I thought "mmmh, another point-and-click software", but after reading this "Experience from giving support in the #postfix channel on IRC" I was sold. It looks very interesting, I haven't read it yet but it looks very detailed. Thanks for the nice share !

[ychaouche]

Emailquestions or the new ##email freenode channel

[ychaouche]

oh, dasein, since you bring the subject of wikipedia and posted a link to a discussion about it : the great thing about wikipedia is that everybody can edit the pages. The bad thing about it is that anybody can edit the pages. If you talk to publishers, they will tell you that writing a book is difficult. It is even more difficult when there are two authors, and is quite an entreprise when there are multiple authors. This is why commercial encyclopedias are far, far better : they are editorialized by very intelligent and sometimes brilliant people who are aces in their fields.