8 ms·

The ridiculous length of this guide is a testament to the fact that it is still really hard to host your own mail.

VLM 13y ago
Something as small as "your own mail" is one or two packages on one server; this guy is implementing most of an entire IT infrastructure including database server and virus scanning capable of operating a hosting company. Sort of like the existence of Oracle's products and IBM's DB2 does not preclude end users being able to use SQLite.
- trurl42 13y ago
  Virus scanning is maybe not that important, but pretty much everything else is. Spam filtering for example. Would you really want to run a mail setup without it? What would be the "SQLite" in mail servers, including spam filtering, webmail, imap and all the other conveniences?
  - calpaterson 13y ago
    I was able to run my personal mailserver for nearly two years without having to learn what amavis-new was. After that, I started getting enough spam that it became an annoyance and I added it. Webmail is not that important to me now that I have a smartphone (I really recommend K-9 Mail for Android, which is FOSS https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9&hl...). Failing that can always log into my machine using ssh and use mutt to read and send mail. I think the mailserver SQLite is Postfix (SMTP), Dovecot (IMAP) and some DNS records.
    - trurl42 13y ago
      Postfix is the mail server used in this very guide. So I don't consider Postfix to be easy to set up. OpenSMTPD looks like a step in the right direction.
      - calpaterson 13y ago
        I haven't looked at OpenSMTPD. This guide does include a lot of configuration, but it's worth mentioning that not only are the defaults pretty reasonable, but that Ubuntu (and Debian) can configure the most important options using dpkg-reconfigure.
      - spudlyo 13y ago
        If you think Postfix is hard to set up, you've probably never had to deal with Sendmail.
  - VLM 13y ago
    SQLite doesn't have all the conveniences of Oracle products or DB2 so that is not a good analogy. I'd define a minimal working system as the distro's MTA set up to BE a smarthost instead of set up to USE a smarthost which is usually not much, and an imap server so "normal" non-mutt using endusers can access it. Everything else is bolt on fun once that basic setup works. Client side spam filtering gets you out of being the middleman, which is awesome if you'd be stuck as the middleman. There's nothing wrong with the article as a display of nearly the largest most complicated system you can design, which is perfectly cool and fun. Personally I'd add commentary to the article about load balancing and proxying and DNS needs more than "yup gonna have to do DNS" but it is very near a maxed out design. Many HN comments are along the lines of "this maxed out design is large and complicated which implies ..." However That doesn't imply anything about non-maxed out designs. The level of what can be accomplished in (insert programming language) in a maximally complicated situation doesn't necessarily imply much about the difficulty of "hello world" Exim and a simple dovecot imap are about ten lines of config editing total. It won't do much, but sometimes that exactly what is needed.
  - gaadd33 13y ago
    I run a mail server with no spam filtering and its not too bad, maybe 2-3 spam messages a day and Thunderbird catches those. I just have a somewhat strict postfix configuration with graylisting enabled. My email is only ~13 years old so I'm not sure how bad it is for people with older domains/emails.
    - clarry 13y ago
      Spam can be hard to predict. I know people who have had a setup like that (working just fine as for you), and then all of a sudden they've been overwhelmed with hundreds to thousands of spam mails per day.
Sssnake 13y ago
It really isn't. It is a testament to how many people don't want to learn anything, and just want to follow a list of directions. Setting up your own mail server is trivial, it is a 5 minute job.
clarry 13y ago
A mail setup does not have to be this complex. Mine, for example, consists of seven lines of configuration for the daemon, one line to have the init system start the server at boot, plus a few aliases & virtual users. This is using the mail server that comes pre-installed with my OS. It took a few minutes to set up and test. And it's been running for a few years now with no changes.

VLM 13y ago

Something as small as "your own mail" is one or two packages on one server; this guy is implementing most of an entire IT infrastructure including database server and virus scanning capable of operating a hosting company. Sort of like the existence of Oracle's products and IBM's DB2 does not preclude end users being able to use SQLite.

trurl42 13y ago
Virus scanning is maybe not that important, but pretty much everything else is. Spam filtering for example. Would you really want to run a mail setup without it? What would be the "SQLite" in mail servers, including spam filtering, webmail, imap and all the other conveniences?
- calpaterson 13y ago
  I was able to run my personal mailserver for nearly two years without having to learn what amavis-new was. After that, I started getting enough spam that it became an annoyance and I added it. Webmail is not that important to me now that I have a smartphone (I really recommend K-9 Mail for Android, which is FOSS https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9&hl...). Failing that can always log into my machine using ssh and use mutt to read and send mail. I think the mailserver SQLite is Postfix (SMTP), Dovecot (IMAP) and some DNS records.
  - trurl42 13y ago
    Postfix is the mail server used in this very guide. So I don't consider Postfix to be easy to set up. OpenSMTPD looks like a step in the right direction.
    - calpaterson 13y ago
      I haven't looked at OpenSMTPD. This guide does include a lot of configuration, but it's worth mentioning that not only are the defaults pretty reasonable, but that Ubuntu (and Debian) can configure the most important options using dpkg-reconfigure.
    - spudlyo 13y ago
      If you think Postfix is hard to set up, you've probably never had to deal with Sendmail.
- VLM 13y ago
  SQLite doesn't have all the conveniences of Oracle products or DB2 so that is not a good analogy. I'd define a minimal working system as the distro's MTA set up to BE a smarthost instead of set up to USE a smarthost which is usually not much, and an imap server so "normal" non-mutt using endusers can access it. Everything else is bolt on fun once that basic setup works. Client side spam filtering gets you out of being the middleman, which is awesome if you'd be stuck as the middleman. There's nothing wrong with the article as a display of nearly the largest most complicated system you can design, which is perfectly cool and fun. Personally I'd add commentary to the article about load balancing and proxying and DNS needs more than "yup gonna have to do DNS" but it is very near a maxed out design. Many HN comments are along the lines of "this maxed out design is large and complicated which implies ..." However That doesn't imply anything about non-maxed out designs. The level of what can be accomplished in (insert programming language) in a maximally complicated situation doesn't necessarily imply much about the difficulty of "hello world" Exim and a simple dovecot imap are about ten lines of config editing total. It won't do much, but sometimes that exactly what is needed.
- gaadd33 13y ago
  I run a mail server with no spam filtering and its not too bad, maybe 2-3 spam messages a day and Thunderbird catches those. I just have a somewhat strict postfix configuration with graylisting enabled. My email is only ~13 years old so I'm not sure how bad it is for people with older domains/emails.
  - clarry 13y ago
    Spam can be hard to predict. I know people who have had a setup like that (working just fine as for you), and then all of a sudden they've been overwhelmed with hundreds to thousands of spam mails per day.

Sssnake 13y ago

It really isn't. It is a testament to how many people don't want to learn anything, and just want to follow a list of directions. Setting up your own mail server is trivial, it is a 5 minute job.

clarry 13y ago

A mail setup does not have to be this complex. Mine, for example, consists of seven lines of configuration for the daemon, one line to have the init system start the server at boot, plus a few aliases & virtual users. This is using the mail server that comes pre-installed with my OS. It took a few minutes to set up and test. And it's been running for a few years now with no changes.