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Kudos to the author for this, this is an endeavor of madness IMHO... The only thing I've ever failed to setup was a functioning mail server using Postfix and D

Kudos to the author for this, this is an endeavor of madness IMHO... The only thing I've ever failed to setup was a functioning mail server using Postfix and Dovecot (it was like ~2007/8). It was a circle of configuration hell I would wish on no one and since then I've never understood why anyone would want to run their own mail server. Pure, unadulterated, hell... I honestly don't even know why we have email at all it's so shit (obviously I do, but hopefully the sentiment I'm expressing is clear). Granted, if you know how to do it, once it's "running" things mostly work (I've known plenty of people who didn't fail as miserably as I did)... but as others have mentioned actually sending emails and not being labeled as SPAM is almost impossible. Plus, making sure your service is literally ALWAYS available, is really quite tricky. It's pretty damn easy to miss some emails. I keep hoping some other protocol will take off so we can free ourselves from email, but it looks like the chance of that ever happening is probably zero.

parliament32 7y ago
>It was a circle of configuration hell I would wish on no one >actually sending emails and not being labeled as SPAM is almost impossible Anecdotal, but I really didn't have any issues with either of the above. Just don't use a tainted IP (protip: basically every cheap VPS provider's IP space is tainted) and set up SPF/DKIM properly. Following a tutorial is probably the way to go if you're not familiar with Postfix/Dovecot. And as you mentioned, once you have it up and running it's basically zero maintenance. >making sure your service is literally ALWAYS available, is really quite tricky. It's pretty damn easy to miss some emails. Mail standards actually make it really hard to miss emails. Every mail service will, by default, retry delivering mail for 4 days (!). This is the default in MTAs and the big boys (Gmail, etc) do the same. If you want to be more HA you can set up backup MXes but that's overkill for a personal server.
shirro 7y ago
I don't understand people who try and cook 3 star michelin food at home. I would rather buy a kebab. But for any competent pro setting up a mail server is ridiculously easy. After the first few you have a recipe. Changes are incremental and relatively infrequent. It is much easier than keeping up with any programming ecosystem or framework. I don't know that I like some of the deskilling I see. It seems like many people would rather learn a proprietary cloud api or use a prebuilt container than learn the fundamentals of setting up their own services. A personal mail server, tested and refined over decades serves as a template that can be applied to other projects. If I have a web server backend that needs to send emails I have a pre-built and tested low maintenance solution I can deploy very quickly. The main issue people will encounter is that you are at the mercy of a much bigger ecosystem where high volume senders have all the power and your good work implementing best practices is rarely rewarded. In the end your mail delivery is at the mercy of some shody unmaintained commercial abandonware spam solution maintained by someone who failed up and doesn't give a shit and has never read an RFC.
icedchai 7y ago
I've been running my own mail servers since 1994. I started with smail, then sendmail, then qmail, various pop3 and imap servers, now postfix and dovecot If you set it up and do it right, which means SPF, DKIM, DMARC these days, plus obviously basics like reverse DNS, it is almost trouble free. Making sure your service is always available isn't even necessary. Queuing and retries are built into the SMTP protocol. I run my servers off a cable modem and I easily have 99.9% availability.

parliament32 7y ago

>It was a circle of configuration hell I would wish on no one >actually sending emails and not being labeled as SPAM is almost impossible Anecdotal, but I really didn't have any issues with either of the above. Just don't use a tainted IP (protip: basically every cheap VPS provider's IP space is tainted) and set up SPF/DKIM properly. Following a tutorial is probably the way to go if you're not familiar with Postfix/Dovecot. And as you mentioned, once you have it up and running it's basically zero maintenance. >making sure your service is literally ALWAYS available, is really quite tricky. It's pretty damn easy to miss some emails. Mail standards actually make it really hard to miss emails. Every mail service will, by default, retry delivering mail for 4 days (!). This is the default in MTAs and the big boys (Gmail, etc) do the same. If you want to be more HA you can set up backup MXes but that's overkill for a personal server.

shirro 7y ago

I don't understand people who try and cook 3 star michelin food at home. I would rather buy a kebab. But for any competent pro setting up a mail server is ridiculously easy. After the first few you have a recipe. Changes are incremental and relatively infrequent. It is much easier than keeping up with any programming ecosystem or framework. I don't know that I like some of the deskilling I see. It seems like many people would rather learn a proprietary cloud api or use a prebuilt container than learn the fundamentals of setting up their own services. A personal mail server, tested and refined over decades serves as a template that can be applied to other projects. If I have a web server backend that needs to send emails I have a pre-built and tested low maintenance solution I can deploy very quickly. The main issue people will encounter is that you are at the mercy of a much bigger ecosystem where high volume senders have all the power and your good work implementing best practices is rarely rewarded. In the end your mail delivery is at the mercy of some shody unmaintained commercial abandonware spam solution maintained by someone who failed up and doesn't give a shit and has never read an RFC.

icedchai 7y ago

I've been running my own mail servers since 1994. I started with smail, then sendmail, then qmail, various pop3 and imap servers, now postfix and dovecot If you set it up and do it right, which means SPF, DKIM, DMARC these days, plus obviously basics like reverse DNS, it is almost trouble free. Making sure your service is always available isn't even necessary. Queuing and retries are built into the SMTP protocol. I run my servers off a cable modem and I easily have 99.9% availability.