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So basically, step 1: install SMTP and IMAP servers, step 2: configure them to run your domain, step 3: configure your DNS?
by dozzie 9y ago
So basically, step 1: install SMTP and IMAP servers, step 2: configure them to
run your domain, step 3: configure your DNS?
- h0r14 9y agoYes, and for junk I chose rspamd for Bayes classification, very effective so far.
- Tepix 9y agoIf you don't want to do everything by hand, check out https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign/ https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign/
- Tharkun 9y agoStep 4: wonder why the hell people aren't replying to your mails. Step 5: realize you've been blackholed by gmail and hotmail with no bounces and no explanation. Step 6: frustration. Step 7: tell people to add your e-mail address to their address book (wtf) and watch as things magically work for a while. Step 8: repeat.
- semanticist 9y agoMy mail server routes via Amazon's SES, which provides an SMTP smarthost my instance of postfix can relay mail to. You authenticate each sending domain using DNS, and it even supports DKIM signing. Until I did this, my deliverability, especially to GMail, was awful.
- _eht 9y agoThat's a smart way to work around a frustrating problem. It's a bummer there are so many loopholes to jump through.
- Tharkun 9y agoAssuming you're running your own mailserver because you like the idea of a decentralized web; isn't it kind of odd to then rely on Amazon?
- semanticist 9y agoMaybe, but in my case it would not be a valid assumption.
- amdavidson 9y agoHave you seen any issues with the envelope from not matching the the email address? ezmlm, for example, will not let you subscribe/unsubscribe
- semanticist 9y agoI've not run into any problems myself - even if I did, I think I'd rather be able to reliably email people with GMail accounts!
- h0r14 9y agoI think Step 7 is a good idea. Initially, I asked some contacts to send me an email from Gmail and Protonmail, to which I replied. From then on, my emails work fine with them (negative spam score).
- egwynn 9y agoHeh. I think your steps 4-8 are all just “step 3 learning pains”. Configuring DNS for a “real email system” is often not trivial to figure out how to do. The steps are usually pretty “easy” (though getting a PTR record sometimes isn’t), but are frequently overlooked by beginners.
- peterwwillis 9y agoYeah. Not to mention a lot of SMTP pain is when a major provider decides to blackhole you, or you are spam blacklisted, neither of which is under your control. Even a large corporation that self-hosts mail may have to constantly call other companies to get on their good side so they can send mail again. (The bigger you are, the more often this happens, but it also happens to small timers)
- Tharkun 9y agoI wish that were the case. I've been administering mail servers going back over 20 years and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The last 4 years or so, things have gotten a lot worse. Google and Microsoft are actively and deliberately making it harder for people to run their own mail servers. Sure, setting up DKIM and SPF and whatnot isn't hard. But blackholing legitimate mail without any reason, without any form of notification or any possible appeal, well that's just appalling. And sure, Google & MS have tools to debug a subset of mail issues, but those don't even work unless your MTA is sending boatloads of mail to their servers.
- Lunatic666 9y agoThis is exactly the problem you run into when sending mails to Gmail: For them there are only bulk senders and gmail address owners. In their whole documentation / faq they don’t even mention small businesses or regular people owning a mailserver to just get contact other human beings. People at Google might be the smartest under the sun, but they don’t understand email: It’s primarily a way for people to communicate with each other. In Google’s eyes it’s only a way to deliver advertising to end users. Edited for typo
- 9y ago
- gsich 9y agoI don't know why so many people on HN tell this story. Are the US IPs all total garbage? I set up my mailserver, sent a testmail to Google, no spam or other stuff. I don't know if SPF or DKIM was even configured. (It now is of course)
- icebraining 9y agoDo you have a fixed or dynamic IP? When I tried sending email from my home network (which had a dynamic, if long-lasting IP), I discovered my ISP's addresses where on the PBL[1] and therefore getting rejected by many servers. This was in Europe, not the US. [1] https://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/ https://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/
- CaptSpify 9y agoI'm in the US and I don't get this story either. I've had my mail server running on 3 different IPs, in my home, and have had no issues at all.