Apple Training Series Mac OS X Server Essentials, Second Edition

Maintaining the Mail Service

Now that you have your mail server configured with settings helpful to the users, you’ll want

to make some further adjustments that are helpful to you, the system administrator. These

settings include options that will keep your server healthy, aid in diagnosing problems, dis-

tribute mail to multiple users, as well as options that may help you adhere to regulatory

requirements.

Saving Disk Space

The most important settings to be aware of are those that affect disk consumption. Every

message that arrives at your server will take up disk space. If your server runs out of free

disk space, you won’t be able to receive any more messages. There are two main methods

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to keep this from happening. The first method is by establishing mail quotas for your

users. We set this number earlier in the lesson using Workgroup Manager when we

enabled each of the users’ mail access. This setting will control the total amount of disk

space a given user can occupy with all his or her email that is stored on the server. The

other item to keep in mind is the possibility of running out of disk space as a result of a

few huge messages coming into your server. You can reduce this threat by limiting the

maximum size of each individual message.

1 In Server Admin, select the Mail service, followed by clicking the Settings button in

the toolbar.

2 Click the Quotas tab.

3 Refuse messages larger than 10 MB.

4 Select the option to “Enable quota warnings.”

5 Click the Edit Quota Warning Message button and configure it as follows:

씰 From: [e-mail]

씰 Subject: Email Quota Warning

씰 Body: You are approaching your email storage quota. Please delete some messages

soon to avoid blocked messages.

6 Click OK.

7 Select the option to “Disable a user’s incoming mail when they exceed 100% of quota.”

8 Click the Edit Over Quota Error Message button and configure it as follows:

씰 From: [e-mail]

씰 Subject: Email Over Quota

씰 Body: You have exceeded your email storage quota. Until you delete some messages,

you will no longer receive new email.

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9 Click OK.

10 Click Save.

Redirecting Messages

Because of company policy or in order to adhere to certain regulations, you may need to

save copies of every message sent through your server, whether delivered or undelivered

to a final recipient. Mac OS X Server offers easy configuration to meet these needs. You’ll

probably want to create a new user with no quota for these delivery email addresses and

periodically archive the mail so it doesn’t fill your mail server.

1 In Server Admin’s Mail Settings, click the General tab.

2 Select the option to “Copy undeliverable mail to: [e-mail].”

3 Select the option to “Copy all mail to: [e-mail].”

4 Click Save.

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Creating Mailing Lists

You can also use Server Admin to set up mailing lists. This functionality is based on an open

source project called mailman and allows you to create an email address on your server that

will distribute a copy of every message it receives to all of the members of that list.

1 In Server Admin’s Mail Settings, click the Mailing Lists tab.

2 Select the option to “Enable mailman mailing lists.”

3 A dialog will appear. Configure it as follows:

씰 Master password: Mail4Apple

씰 Administrators: [e-mail] [e-mail]

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4 Click OK.

The Mailman master mailing list will be created. This is just a systemwide list for

tracking the master password. We’ll be creating our mailing list next.

5 Click the Add (+) button below the Mailing Lists list to create a new list.

6 A dialog will appear. Configure it as follows:

씰 List Name: PretendcoWomen

씰 Admin User: [e-mail]

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