[solved]SMTP Server Choices with SMTP AUTH

[Bodger]

I need to install and run a mail server on my home machine.

I am seeing multiple choices and have had some bad luck in the past.

I need SMTP with SMTP Auth (I am often remote) with POP3. Not interested in IMAP.

In the past I have tried Sendmail (never will go there again) and a program called James, it works quietly but I get no feedback from it, I have no idea what is in the outbound queue.

I am currently looking at some various QMail Howtos for Gentoo and have some questions on that.

First:

1) Is there a comparison article somewhere that compares these SMTP/POP servers?
2) What is the most common installation on Gentoo? Most reliable?
3) It seems all the SMTP servers if they do support SMTP AUTH only support it as an afterthought with add-ons that make me do somersaults to get it installed. Does anyone know why this is true? I mean come on this is the 21st century isn't it?

QMail questions:

In reading the Gentoo howto's

Such as: http://gentoo-wiki.com/QmailRocksOnGentoo

It is installing both vPopMail and Courier IMAP/POP servers.

4) Does anyone know why both are installed? Could I just use vPopMail? or Courier POP3 (not IMAP)?
5) It is not clear to me if it is really supporting SMTP-AUTH does anyone have experience setting up an SMTP-AUTH server with QMail?

Thank you for your attention.

Julian

[nixnut]

Moved from Gentoo Chat to Networking & Security.
Networking stuff, so moved here.
_________________
Please add [solved] to the initial post's subject line if you feel your problem is resolved. Help answer the unanswered

talk is cheap. supply exceeds demand

[nobspangle]

I would recommend postfix with dovecot for pop3.
Postfix is almost configured out of the box and dovecot is very easy to set up. You need to compile postfix with SASL use flag to get SMTP AUTH.

[Bodger]

Let me look into postfix, I like the idea of a simple use flag to configure the feature in.

More comments are welcome.

Thanx

Julian