This personal music blog is running on a new dedicated server that I have rented. »Dedicated« means that I control the entire server (computer) and can set up as many websites as I like, or the server can handle. It’s my plan to move my major music sites over to this server in time. But it’s not quite ready yet…

WARNING [Geek Talk]
The solution I selected is not a so called “managed server” – instead I have to set up most things myself, which have forced me to learn a little about Linux and networks the last couple of weeks. I chose to install Linux Debian Sarge LAMP. That has actually gone quite well, and I find setting up the basics: “Virtual servers” in apache, MySQL databases, Log-file rotation, adding IP addresses, etc. etc. to be relatively easy – especially through a control panel called “Webmin”. All these things work like they are supposed to and in a generally logical way. But there is one big problem, and it’s causing me headaches and I don’t want to spend any more time trying to get it to work properly: email!

I installed something called “sendmail” and it works sortof-kinda, but mails sent from my server is only received when using a so called “-f parameter” and sendmail is basically impossible to reconfigure unless you’re a serious Linux-geek. So, I tried to uninstall sendmail and install something called “postfix” instead. No go. This is a big problem with many Linux programs – when you install something it tend to overwrite a lot of other stuff so it can’t be uninstalled without breaking other things. And sendmail won’t let go. Postfix seems a little easier and “friendlier” to use, but perhaps I should look at a commercial package. Only thing is it must not be too expensive because if I spend too much money trying to make things run, I should probably have chosen a “managed” server to begin with (on a managed server everything will be preinstalled and ready to easily setup – and you get support).

I’ve already spend too much time on this whole mail problem. When things work, Linux can be excellent, but as soon as something goes wrong it can become extremely problematic, espeically compared to Apple’s Mac OS X. I must admit that when trying to setup – and uninstall – sendmail I missed the simplicity of Mac OS X and the way Mac OS X packages works and behaves (which, for example, would have allowed me to remove sendmail without any hassle).
[/Geek Talk] …end of rambling 😉

Anyhow, I’m sure I’ll find a solution, but not today. Today is music day, not tech-day.