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Configuring a mail server with Postfix (ebook, in progress)

27 points by senko 16y ago

senko 16y ago
Although the conventional wisdom of the day seems to be it's better/easier to outsource your mail servers, setting up one yourself is not hard, if you're not handling huge amounts of mail and already have a system you can put your MX on.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- GoodIntentions 16y ago
  Outsourcing email - read the fine print. DDOS Last time I looked at sourcing a store and forward inbound proxy, one company I eliminated (not linking to them on purpose) had buried in their user agreement some heavy open-ended penalties should your server suffer a DDOS. Unlikely to occur, but potentially bankruptcy if it actually occurs. SPAM The spam penalties were not as bad, but something that could potentially get a legitimate server unplugged since they were ultimately complaint driven rather than based on the way you were actually used/mis-used the mail server. There was a fair bit to read iirc, but it was worth 'wasting' my time in this event. I said "eff it" and configured a sendmail/opensolaris box instead.
- Travis 16y ago
  There are definitely reasons to run your own mail server. However, I've found (in my 7 years as a linux sysadmin/dev) that email is one of the harder services to setup, compared to http, database, etc. It's the only service I use a GUI for to administer. Something about having to compile the aliases, and I get confused with the spamassasin settings.
  - gog 16y ago
    What GUI are you using? Compiling aliases? I guess you are not using virtual domains and sql storage? If there was one GUI for configuration and management of every service mentioned in the book would you consider switching and paying a small fee for such a tool?
    - Travis 16y ago
      I had an old mac server, so I use Apple's gui. TBH, I don't even know if its sendmail or postfix under the hood. Never even got started using virtual domains. I just run emails for one domain, so it never sounded like I should setup the virtual ones. I can't envision a situation where I would really need to do anything sophisticated with an email server, when I wouldn't just use google apps. I can do the basic "send and receive" email from my server, and I was able to let my gmail send through that (removing the "on behalf of" header). But other than that I'm probably a hosted email guy all the way. I've never spent any money on email stuff or been focused on it, so I don't have any feel for costs.
thinkbohemian 16y ago
The Horror, the horror!!! I did this a few years ago and it was super painful, so ebook would be great!! While it is very easy to find services that will send your email for you it is imho difficult to find services that will allow you to send and receive bulk email. When you give users of your service custom email addresses, you can start to do really cool things, like have users reply back to comments via email.
- die_sekte 16y ago
  SendGrid does this with a nice HTTP API.
- SageRaven 16y ago
  Tell me about it. I wanted to move a client of mine from a dedicated box to a cheaper, more powerful VPS. They have a monthly newsletter with about 17k subscribers (opt-in, managed by a list server package). I inquired about their policy, and they pretty much treated me like I was found under a rock. In spite of us running a clean site (I showed the the URL for the newsletter page, and our clean multi-RBL lookup), and they still wanted me to agree to this BS terms-of-service page with such unreasonable terms I dropped the entire idea. Which is a shame, since the current provider really sucks, from a support perspective, but they've never been unreasonable about, you know, using the internet to send mail to a bunch of people at once. Between this attitude and rabid mail admins with unreasonable RBL policies (like flat-out rejecting a message for being listed on only 1 of ~40 or so public RBLs -- one that demands money for immediate delisting), I've witnessed a slow Balkanization of the internet over the years.
  - gog 16y ago
    That's true. That is a reason I do not allow sending out mass emails from the main mail servers IP address. You never know who will be trigger happy. If for some reason bulk mailing providers do not suit you it cheaper to have a separate machine/IP address for sending such emails than having to deal with important emails not coming through because somebody blacklisted your IP address although he subscribed to the mailing list.
devmach 16y ago
Good stuff. There is also workaround.org's ISPmail tutorials : http://workaround.org/ispmail http://workaround.org/ispmail
- gog 16y ago
  Those are also nice. But I always find something missing in the available tutorials. Sometimes it's vacation auto reply, sometimes DKIM signing, etc... And of course the tutorial for Debian Squeeze is not yet available. Disclosure: I am the author of the book this link points to.
  - devmach 16y ago
    kudos for the book. I really liked it. Will/Could you add a section for Dovecot also?
    - gog 16y ago
      Thank you. I don't believe I will be doing a Dovecot chapter anytime soon, for the reasons I stated at the beginning of http://gogs.info/books/debian-mail/chunked/courier.html http://gogs.info/books/debian-mail/chunked/courier.html But, I must admit, I really like Dovecots Sieve filtering. I do plan to publish the books Docbook sources on Github, hopefully someone who has more experience with Dovecot would be interested in contributing.
      - sc68cal 16y ago
        I run dovecot on my FreeBSD box. I'd be happy to contribute a fork on Github. You can find me on github with the same handle.
chuhnk 16y ago
I'll be interested to see what information within this ebook more relevant or upto date than something like "Postfix the definitive guide" from the O'Reilly series. When I configured my first mail server it was all very cryptic but then I had very little sysadmin experience at the time. I honestly feel postfix is very easy to setup and its the main reason I chose it over other mail servers like exim, qmail or sendmail. I only became aware of the added performance bonus after running bulk mailing at 1 million emails per hour.

27 points by senko 16y ago

senko 16y ago

Although the conventional wisdom of the day seems to be it's better/easier to outsource your mail servers, setting up one yourself is not hard, if you're not handling huge amounts of mail and already have a system you can put your MX on.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
GoodIntentions 16y ago
Outsourcing email - read the fine print. DDOS Last time I looked at sourcing a store and forward inbound proxy, one company I eliminated (not linking to them on purpose) had buried in their user agreement some heavy open-ended penalties should your server suffer a DDOS. Unlikely to occur, but potentially bankruptcy if it actually occurs. SPAM The spam penalties were not as bad, but something that could potentially get a legitimate server unplugged since they were ultimately complaint driven rather than based on the way you were actually used/mis-used the mail server. There was a fair bit to read iirc, but it was worth 'wasting' my time in this event. I said "eff it" and configured a sendmail/opensolaris box instead.
Travis 16y ago
There are definitely reasons to run your own mail server. However, I've found (in my 7 years as a linux sysadmin/dev) that email is one of the harder services to setup, compared to http, database, etc. It's the only service I use a GUI for to administer. Something about having to compile the aliases, and I get confused with the spamassasin settings.
- gog 16y ago
  What GUI are you using? Compiling aliases? I guess you are not using virtual domains and sql storage? If there was one GUI for configuration and management of every service mentioned in the book would you consider switching and paying a small fee for such a tool?
  - Travis 16y ago
    I had an old mac server, so I use Apple's gui. TBH, I don't even know if its sendmail or postfix under the hood. Never even got started using virtual domains. I just run emails for one domain, so it never sounded like I should setup the virtual ones. I can't envision a situation where I would really need to do anything sophisticated with an email server, when I wouldn't just use google apps. I can do the basic "send and receive" email from my server, and I was able to let my gmail send through that (removing the "on behalf of" header). But other than that I'm probably a hosted email guy all the way. I've never spent any money on email stuff or been focused on it, so I don't have any feel for costs.

thinkbohemian 16y ago

The Horror, the horror!!! I did this a few years ago and it was super painful, so ebook would be great!! While it is very easy to find services that will send your email for you it is imho difficult to find services that will allow you to send and receive bulk email. When you give users of your service custom email addresses, you can start to do really cool things, like have users reply back to comments via email.

die_sekte 16y ago
SendGrid does this with a nice HTTP API.
SageRaven 16y ago
Tell me about it. I wanted to move a client of mine from a dedicated box to a cheaper, more powerful VPS. They have a monthly newsletter with about 17k subscribers (opt-in, managed by a list server package). I inquired about their policy, and they pretty much treated me like I was found under a rock. In spite of us running a clean site (I showed the the URL for the newsletter page, and our clean multi-RBL lookup), and they still wanted me to agree to this BS terms-of-service page with such unreasonable terms I dropped the entire idea. Which is a shame, since the current provider really sucks, from a support perspective, but they've never been unreasonable about, you know, using the internet to send mail to a bunch of people at once. Between this attitude and rabid mail admins with unreasonable RBL policies (like flat-out rejecting a message for being listed on only 1 of ~40 or so public RBLs -- one that demands money for immediate delisting), I've witnessed a slow Balkanization of the internet over the years.
- gog 16y ago
  That's true. That is a reason I do not allow sending out mass emails from the main mail servers IP address. You never know who will be trigger happy. If for some reason bulk mailing providers do not suit you it cheaper to have a separate machine/IP address for sending such emails than having to deal with important emails not coming through because somebody blacklisted your IP address although he subscribed to the mailing list.

devmach 16y ago

Good stuff. There is also workaround.org's ISPmail tutorials : http://workaround.org/ispmail http://workaround.org/ispmail

gog 16y ago
Those are also nice. But I always find something missing in the available tutorials. Sometimes it's vacation auto reply, sometimes DKIM signing, etc... And of course the tutorial for Debian Squeeze is not yet available. Disclosure: I am the author of the book this link points to.
- devmach 16y ago
  kudos for the book. I really liked it. Will/Could you add a section for Dovecot also?
  - gog 16y ago
    Thank you. I don't believe I will be doing a Dovecot chapter anytime soon, for the reasons I stated at the beginning of http://gogs.info/books/debian-mail/chunked/courier.html http://gogs.info/books/debian-mail/chunked/courier.html But, I must admit, I really like Dovecots Sieve filtering. I do plan to publish the books Docbook sources on Github, hopefully someone who has more experience with Dovecot would be interested in contributing.
    - sc68cal 16y ago
      I run dovecot on my FreeBSD box. I'd be happy to contribute a fork on Github. You can find me on github with the same handle.

chuhnk 16y ago

I'll be interested to see what information within this ebook more relevant or upto date than something like "Postfix the definitive guide" from the O'Reilly series. When I configured my first mail server it was all very cryptic but then I had very little sysadmin experience at the time. I honestly feel postfix is very easy to setup and its the main reason I chose it over other mail servers like exim, qmail or sendmail. I only became aware of the added performance bonus after running bulk mailing at 1 million emails per hour.