As in the previous post, excellent tutorial Joe. I have to say, I went through this tutorial 5 times, step by step, and could not get it working. It appeared the SMTP service was up and running, and everything, but when I connected via telnet I got nowhere, it just seemed to hang the connection. Finally after going through the whole tutorial, I noticed something I missed (not once, but 5 times), and that was the creation of the valias.txt file. Of course, I had to actually go and read my mail log to find that little mistake (and I am kicking myself over and over and over for not doing that in the FIRST place). Anyhow, I am a complete idiot on that one.

The only thing I would suggest is a little expansion on the whole valias.txt file. I know you gave a quick example, and yes I can go through and read the docs to get more info on the 'virtual_alias_maps', but to make this tutorial more complete, it might help us newbies for a little more basic information on that file.

Also I wanted to ask, in regards to MySQL (or presumably PostgreSQL), you suggested small systems avoid using database functionality. I am working on small project that will allow the addition of mail and web hosts, DNS entries, and so on, via web interface (yes I know, I'm reinventing the wheel), but everything I have come across (such as Webmin, etc), seems to be overkill for my purposes. Anyhow, would it be worth while to move to a database rather than a flatfile for building a virtual domain / virtual user system? (again I am just starting to learn how all these server components fit together, and have a strong web programming background, very little in the way of administration)

Thanks

Aaron