5 ms·

Miserable, this kind of stuff is why I don't run my own mail server any more. Happy Fastmail customer since 2006.

mrmondo 11y ago
Make that two of us!
djsumdog 11y ago
I might go that route myself. I've been running my own email server since 2012 and I'm just tired of having my stuff constantly flagged as spam
- merb 11y ago
  use rdns, spf and dkms, luke.
  - regecks 11y ago
    ... and sign up and monitor every FBL you can get your hands on, have outgoing spam filtering gateways, procedures to rotate subnets in case Microsoft/Outlook/Hotmail receive a single complaint about any message relayed by your MTA and take their sweet time "conditionally mitigating" you. Pray daily that none of your users get their email creds stolen on a coffee shop wi-fi. It's a very lame part-time job.
    - merb 11y ago
      you won't got onto a FBL if you are the only sender.
oever 11y ago
It's really hard to run you own mail server. Much harder than a web server. This is bad for freedom on the internet. http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/15/email.html http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/15/email.html
- broodbucket 11y ago
  I configured a pretty simple system (dovecot + opensmtpd) following the guide on the Arch wiki in under an hour, it really wasn't that tricky. I have dodged some common problems, though: - my domain wasn't completely unknown so I had no issues with gmail flagging me as spam - I use my gmail for signing up to things I don't care about mail from, so I have yet to actually receive any spam (at which point I will figure out how spamassassin works) I don't think we need any additional software to make the process easier, maybe just better documentation from the distributions themselves or some already set up bundles. Hosting providers like DigitalOcean already have ready-to-deploy images for WordPress and Docker and whatnot, why not one for mail?
  - shocks 11y ago
    Running a mail server is easy, providing a mail service is HARD. Deliverability is really difficult. Being online all the time to make sure you're always recieving email is hard. I was constantly plagued by worry that the important email I sent never actually arrived, or the important email I was waiting for had been sent but I never actually got it.
    - hdabrows 11y ago
      SMTP requires the sender to retry delivery if the destination is unreachable. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321#section-4.5.4.1 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321#section-4.5.4.1
      - shocks 11y ago
        Just because it's in the RFC does not mean it will be obeyed. I tried running postgrey - a system that rejects senders it doesn't recognise, tells them to "try again in a minute", and accepts the second email. The theory being that spammers rarely check for these responses because they operate on a "fire and forget" basis. In reality it didn't work because lots of email services didn't correctly respond to the "try again in a minute" response - which is in the RFC! Maybe it's an extreme example. You expect an SMTP server not to be up all the time, you don't expect them to randomly reject mail and ask you to try again later, but you get my point. It just adds to the stress/worry. I found myself default to Gmail a lot of the time for this reason.
cpr 11y ago
Agreed. Ran postfix + cyrus + DSPAM for years and dreaded dealing with spam every day--couldn't get DSPAM to really work reliably, so had to fish out ham daily, and mark a lot of spam. Never really invested the time to learn the ins and outs of postfix hardening, nor to figure out cyrus quirks that kept bugging us on a low-level basis. With Fastmail for the past more than year, and very happy with them. I'm also very happy they're clearly at the forefront of OSS mail system development. (Don't use CarDAV or CalDAV, so don't benefit from their efforts there.) (Though oddly enough, just today I started getting a bunch more spam. Maybe there's a Christmas rush of spam, so the .01% that gets through is more noticeable?) In general, I haven't had to go fishing for ham more than once or twice in the past year, which is pretty amazing.

Make that two of us!

I might go that route myself. I've been running my own email server since 2012 and I'm just tired of having my stuff constantly flagged as spam

merb 11y ago
use rdns, spf and dkms, luke.
- regecks 11y ago
  ... and sign up and monitor every FBL you can get your hands on, have outgoing spam filtering gateways, procedures to rotate subnets in case Microsoft/Outlook/Hotmail receive a single complaint about any message relayed by your MTA and take their sweet time "conditionally mitigating" you. Pray daily that none of your users get their email creds stolen on a coffee shop wi-fi. It's a very lame part-time job.
  - merb 11y ago
    you won't got onto a FBL if you are the only sender.

oever 11y ago

It's really hard to run you own mail server. Much harder than a web server. This is bad for freedom on the internet. http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/15/email.html http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/15/email.html

broodbucket 11y ago
I configured a pretty simple system (dovecot + opensmtpd) following the guide on the Arch wiki in under an hour, it really wasn't that tricky. I have dodged some common problems, though: - my domain wasn't completely unknown so I had no issues with gmail flagging me as spam - I use my gmail for signing up to things I don't care about mail from, so I have yet to actually receive any spam (at which point I will figure out how spamassassin works) I don't think we need any additional software to make the process easier, maybe just better documentation from the distributions themselves or some already set up bundles. Hosting providers like DigitalOcean already have ready-to-deploy images for WordPress and Docker and whatnot, why not one for mail?
- shocks 11y ago
  Running a mail server is easy, providing a mail service is HARD. Deliverability is really difficult. Being online all the time to make sure you're always recieving email is hard. I was constantly plagued by worry that the important email I sent never actually arrived, or the important email I was waiting for had been sent but I never actually got it.
  - hdabrows 11y ago
    SMTP requires the sender to retry delivery if the destination is unreachable. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321#section-4.5.4.1 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321#section-4.5.4.1
    - shocks 11y ago
      Just because it's in the RFC does not mean it will be obeyed. I tried running postgrey - a system that rejects senders it doesn't recognise, tells them to "try again in a minute", and accepts the second email. The theory being that spammers rarely check for these responses because they operate on a "fire and forget" basis. In reality it didn't work because lots of email services didn't correctly respond to the "try again in a minute" response - which is in the RFC! Maybe it's an extreme example. You expect an SMTP server not to be up all the time, you don't expect them to randomly reject mail and ask you to try again later, but you get my point. It just adds to the stress/worry. I found myself default to Gmail a lot of the time for this reason.

cpr 11y ago

Agreed. Ran postfix + cyrus + DSPAM for years and dreaded dealing with spam every day--couldn't get DSPAM to really work reliably, so had to fish out ham daily, and mark a lot of spam. Never really invested the time to learn the ins and outs of postfix hardening, nor to figure out cyrus quirks that kept bugging us on a low-level basis. With Fastmail for the past more than year, and very happy with them. I'm also very happy they're clearly at the forefront of OSS mail system development. (Don't use CarDAV or CalDAV, so don't benefit from their efforts there.) (Though oddly enough, just today I started getting a bunch more spam. Maybe there's a Christmas rush of spam, so the .01% that gets through is more noticeable?) In general, I haven't had to go fishing for ham more than once or twice in the past year, which is pretty amazing.