How do I set up an email server in the development environment?

Hi,

I tearing my hair out trying to set up an email server for testing purposes and hope someone can help.

I'm using the book, but haven't installed via Xampp as I already had the other software installed and configured so originally tried to configure Mercury manually. I have now given up on this route.

At the moment, I have:

Postcast SMTP server
ArGoSoft Mail Server
Thunderbird mail client

Thunderbird can send a message to Postcast, but once in postcast, it gets stuck, and will not send out (the message is "Unable to resolve hostname localhost").

ArGoSoft and Thunderbird will talk to each other on POP3 without a problem, and I have a user account set up as "adam@localhost", which is the email address I have been using to try an send to.

Can anyone please point me in the direction of step-by-step instructions for mail server newbies so I can get this working, I've spent over a day trying to do this.

Many thanks,
Adam.

Although the underlying principles which mail servers operate on are similar in general, you will need to look up the documentation of the particular mail server software you want to use and determine how to configure it to your needs.

In particular, you should concentrate on the security settings portion of the software as you do not want to unknowingly compromise your computer through a misconfiguration. You will also want to make sure that it does not interfere with the other existing programs on your PC.

From the error messages you posted in both instances, it would be good to look up the information from the individual software's site for instructions on how to overcome those problems in the "correct" manner so that your system will not be compromised or malfunction.