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It's absolutely possible to run an email server in 2016 and I encourage anyone capable to do so! Email is one of the bastions of the decentralised Internet and
by Nux 10y ago
It's absolutely possible to run an email server in 2016 and I encourage anyone capable to do so!
Email is one of the bastions of the decentralised Internet and we should hang on to it.
Every day more and more people are moving to Gmail/Hotmail/Outlook and while I do understand the reasons, it also puts more and more power into the hands of these providers and the little guy (us) gets more screwed (like marked as junk by default by them :< )
Having said that, here's my check list for successfully delivering email:
- make sure your IP (IPv6) is clean and not listed in any RBL, use e.g. http://multirbl.valli.org/ http://multirbl.valli.org/ to check
- make sure you have a correct reverse dns (ptr) entry for said IP and that ptr/hostname's A record is also valid
- make sure your MTA does not append to the message headers your client's IP (ie x-originating-ip), messages can be blocked based only on "dodgy" x-originating-ip (see eg https://major.io/2013/04/14/remove-sensitive-information-from-email-headers-with-postfix/ https://major.io/2013/04/14/remove-sensitive-information-fro... )
- set up SSL properly in your MTA, there are so many providers giving away free certs nowadays
- SPF, DKIM, DMARC - set them up, properly, this site can come in handy for checking yourself https://www.mail-tester.com/ https://www.mail-tester.com/
- do not share the IP of your email server with a web server running any sort of scripting engine - if it gets exploited in any way usually sending spam is what the abusers will do
- last but not least - and while I loved qmail and vpopmail - use Postfix or Exim, they are both more fit for 2016, more configurable and with much, much larger user bases and as such bigger community and documentation.
HTH
- colejohnson66 10y agoBurn how do you ensure your mails aren't tossed in the spam box of the big ones?
- rasjani 10y agoEach of the points mentioned in the post you replied to contribute to the decision if big players mark your mails as spam or not.
- darkhorn 10y agoPlus make sure that your whois is not registered behind proxy registrars. In other words use your real name and real email address.
- madez 10y agoI disagree with you. I consider email legacy technology because of its reliance upon DNS and static IP addresses. These two requirements make hosting email unnecessarily costly.
- a3n 10y agoWhat replaces email?
- quickben 10y agoFor most of the people I interact with, and most of the usecases: Viber
- systemfreund 10y agoi consider viber legacy technology because of its reliance on a centralized system and which will stop working as soon as vc money runs out
- mastazi 10y agoMoreover, Viber's adoption is highly concentrated in some specific countries so, depending on where your friends are based, it might not be a viable solution.
- pmontra 10y agoI uninstalled Viber when the last friend still using it started using WhatsApp. Btw, everybody still has email and SMS like in the 90s. For me SMS are a fallback when IM won't work for a given person; email is my primary mean of communication for business. Furthermore I can archive and search email much more than IMs.
- noinsight 10y agoI would suggest running OpenSMTPD over any of the alternatives, it's much easier to configure and should be/remain secure as it comes from the OpenBSD people (the audit from Qualys attests to that).
- X86BSD 10y agoYeah I'll have to disagree here. I beat my head against this horribly documented MTA just trying to get virtual users to work with a relay host. I gave up after three days of slitting my wrists trying to get it to work. It's horribly documented, getting help out of the obsd folks is like getting blood from a turnip, but if it works for you great! But I would never agree it's easier to configure or has better documentation than postfix.
- MustardTiger 10y agoI'm genuinely curious here since opensmtpd has been by far the easiest to configure MTA I've ever seen. What problem(s) did you have? Virtual users through a relay host is literally one simple line: accept for domain "example.com" virtual <users> relay via relay.example.com I don't see how anyone could conclude that is more difficult than postfix.
- X86BSD 10y agoAnd have you tried it? Because when I tried it it did not work as documented.
- MustardTiger 10y agoYes, it works as expected. Again, what problem(s) did you have? Vague "its hard" replaced with an even more vague "it didn't work" comes off as trolling rather than a legit problem.
- pflanze 10y agoThere was http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2015/q4/11 http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2015/q4/11 PS. maybe that's one of the vulnerabilities mentioned in the report (1). Anyway it's an argument for me to run Qmail/qpsmtpd instead. (1) https://www.qualys.com/2015/10/02/opensmtpd-audit-report.txt https://www.qualys.com/2015/10/02/opensmtpd-audit-report.txt
- thomasjames 10y agoI recently ran into issues with the PTR on a mail server and did the lazy/unsustainable move of just disabling IPv6. Wish I had found this post before!
- mgbmtl 10y agoIf you can't control your PTR on IPv6, in postfix I recommend using: "smtp_address_preference = ipv4", instead of fully disabling IPv6. This way you can still receive email from IPv6 servers. I run an smtp server from home with a static IPv4 address (for which the ISP lets me configure the PTR), but their IPv6 is "beta" and they don't yet support delegation, which is rather frustrating, but different topic.
- merb 10y agoSPF, DKIM, DMARC could be dropped if you actually use aws ses to send your mails, you can actually forward the mails there. So it's pretty impossible that your messages will be in spam. The only thing you need to manage is incoming mail now and not being a open relay.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- cddotdotslash 10y agoAnd if you still want them, AWS supports enabling these for your outgoing emails.
- loup-vaillant 10y agoHence defeating one of the main purposes of running your own mail server in the first place: decentralization.
- matthewking 10y agoUnfortunately SES servers seem to be regularly blacklisted. A quick google confirms. I've been using SES for 3-4 months now and had a few hard bounces with specific mention to the IP being banned.
- voltagex_ 10y agoThe last spam that got through GMail's filter was from amazonses.com. It wasn't clear how to report it back to Amazon.
- merb 10y agoactually I never had blacklisting problems on aws ses. My guess would be that the big providers ignoring the blaklists for themself. I mean even Google sometimes gets on a blacklist or Microsoft on still no email happened to be in Spam filter.
- jwr 10y ago> Email is one of the bastions of the decentralised Internet and we should hang on to it. This. I hope someone will eventually create an "E-mail server in a box" package for Ubuntu LTS, so that more people can run their own E-mail. I'm not saying it has to be super-easy for everyone, just that it should avoid unnecessary chore work (like configuring postfix to always use TLS, or plugging postgrey into postfix).
- seanp2k2 10y agoThe problem is that setting up an MTA that can deliver to gmail etc can't e.g. Be done (typically) on a dynamic IP like you'd have at home and the scripts running would have to interact with your registrar and/or DNS provider to properly configure DNS (unless it also sets up a nameserver, which would make assumptions about how the domain is / could be used). There are a lot of moving parts, and being an email admin requires some maintenance like being vigilant about not allowing spam. An automated script to set it up for people who wouldn't know how to run it would be doing those people a disservice.
- reallyimran 10y agoThere is something you can do to install that : https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/
- nickpsecurity 10y agoThat attempt at the problem looks pretty nice. Thanks for sharing it.
- chrischen 10y agoAny open source mail servers taht set all this up? Last I checked in 2011 there weren't any.
- NetOpWibby 10y agoMail-in-a-Box
- joosters 10y agoThank you for mentioning https://www.mail-tester.com/ https://www.mail-tester.com/ - I wish I knew this site existed back when I was setting up my mail server. I struggled setting up SPF and DKIM, having a site that validates your config is very helpful.
- MustardTiger 10y ago>use Postfix or Exim Better yet, opensmtpd.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ashitlerferad 10y ago> Email is one of the bastions of the decentralised Internet and we should hang on to it. ITYM federated Internet, agreed though.
- lazyjones 10y agoIt's also recommended to not have any "vacation" autoreply mails - you will get spam with blacklist's honeypot email addresses as apparent sender and end up on blacklists.
- mancerayder 10y agoHow realistic is it to be able to do all this from a Digital Ocean or other VPS, given that those IP blocks may have already been used by spammers or may be used periodically by spammers? I.e. it's trivial for them to set up VPSes on the fly. I'd feel nervous about doing this at home. For one thing, my ISP is a residential cable internet provider, and not 100% guaranteed uptime as a result. I'd hate to miss mail or worry whether I did.
- zatkin 10y ago>- make sure your IP (IPv6) is clean and not listed in any RBL, use e.g. http://multirbl.valli.org/ http://multirbl.valli.org/ to check
- psynaut 10y agoSome regions are totally plagued with ISPs that block port 25 on their residential plans. It's totally despicable that they do this, and often without knowing it (sales reps and techs will wrongly deny that they block port 25).
- psynaut 10y agoEmbedded mail servers are worth a look. E.g: https://own-mailbox.com/ https://own-mailbox.com/ https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Hardware https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Hardware