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Intranet Linux Server 

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

The rainmail intranet server is a complete intranet suite for corporates, which includes a mail server, proxy server, Web server and file server on a Linux box. Usually, all these services are not very easy to configure on Linux, as you need to manually edit their configuration files and configure each service individually. Rainmail gives you a neat GUI to configure and manage all these services from one console.

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The suite contains Qmail as the mail server, which has several features such as local mail routing, mail forwarding to forward your mail to other e-mail ids or even other mail servers. It provides both POP3 and Web-based e-mail access. The Web interface has other features such as a spellchecker, configuring additional POP3 accounts, creating address book, mail folder, and even mail filters to block spam. The built-in proxy server runs on Squid and you can filter out unwanted websites to restrict Internet access. Apache, of course, is the Web server. It also includes SAMBA fileserver for sharing files among users in the organization.

RAINMAIL INTRANET SERVER

Snapshot
PRAMATI STUDIO 3.0
Price: 
Rs 120,000 for unlimited user edition (includes one year service)
Meant for:
Corporates and educational institutes
Feature:
Proxy, mail server, intranet server, VPN, bandwidth manager, file server
Pros:
Easy to manage
Cons:
Only dial-up ISP settings can be provided during setup. These can be changed to dedicated link later
Contact: 
Carizen Software, Chennai
Tel:
044-4958222/8
E-mail:
ifo@carizen.com

Apart from these basic services, it also has other interesting features like bandwidth management, Internet-based fax server, built-in anti-virus software, user account manager, support for DSL, cable modem and dial-up connectivity with multiple dial-up ISP accounts. It also supports VPN (virtual private network) and VoIP configurations. You can setup a dial-in server for accessing the Intranet from outside. 

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Installing and setting up Rainmail is easy, and it works on RedHat Linux 5.2 or above. However, even if you have a dedicated link to the Internet like DSL, the set up wizard prompts you to provide a dial-up to ISP’s settings. You can switch to the dedicated link after the installation. Once installed, all services are quite easy to manage and configure. The only time consuming task is the VPN set up, which took us about four hours on our setup. In this, it had to make certain changes in the kernel. 

The bottom line: Rainmail comes with Redhat 7.2. Overall, if configuring various services in Linux gives you nightmares, this package might be a good choice as it makes everything simple. But if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, then it might be a little expensive.

Sanjay Majumder at PCQ Labs

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