Using Ubuntu Server 7.10 and a free Linux based email system called Axigen Mail I was able to install the VM OS and the mail server in about 30 minutes using their cool installation video which is specific to the Ubuntu OS. Then all I had to do was create some accounts and make some minor system configuration changes and viola, I had my own mail system running on Linux.

Axigen is a really nice mail system. It has POP3 or IMAP capabilities, ClamAV virus scanning with auto updates, Spamassassin SPAM detection and a Webmail interface. Running on Linux, the system is really fast delivering emails in seconds!

The only problem I have is that the majority of the mail sent from my domain is usually marked as SPAM by the big ISP and I have to tell people they need to add my address as a valid account. I am currently trying to figure out how to get my domain to be generally accepted by most email providers.

A New Webserver

After I finished my “mailserver” VM I wanted to do more with Linux. I thought I would look into creating a Linux based webserver to see if I liked it and could manage it easily enough to use it going forward.

I created another VM, installed Ubuntu Server with the Apache2 option, copied my website content over to the new system and opened a second HTTP port on my router. 8080 was now redirected to my new “webserver” so I could start testing from the outside.

The first problem I encounter was with my Guest Book. It was a PHP application and now I needed to install PHP on the Linux server. No problem, I searched the internet for a Ubuntu PHP5 install package and got it installed. Trouble is it didn’t work. Apache wasn’t executing PHP.

After many hours of debugging I finally figured out that I needed to install additional packages to get PHP to interface with Apache.

Once I was happy I decided to migrate my website to linux permenantly. I changed the router to point to the Linux webserver and haven’t looked back. I have since deleted the windows webserver.