Yes - I just started doing it again. I'm glad I did. I just made sure that I could send/receive mail without issue from the large email systems.
Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?
41–50 of 314 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?
#42Are you running it out of your house (e.g. a residential ISP). If you are you'll probably never have much success, all the major email providers block residential IP addresses.
VPS provider. Respectable one.
Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?
#43I'm doing it, also using Qmail. I've felt the same pains as you (even started to suspect that providers might detect mail was being sent by Qmail and scoring that lower (perhaps (only) spammers are using Qmail today?), but more probably my network block (Hetzner.de) is the biggest reason for my difficulties). Here's what I've done on top of your list: - backscatter prevention (using my own https://github.com/pflanze/…
Why would other MTAs have a buff against Qmail? I'm using maradns for DNS but I respect djb's software a lot. I'm using his publicfile as an httpd. I have already added my domains in google's postmaster tools. So far it hasn't helped much
One thing I learned from my spam filter's logs is that sending email in a slightly weird way is great way to marked as spam. I used to receive a few thousand emails a month that didn't have a Date header - all spam - which is strictly required by RFC2822 but sometimes allowed to be absent. amavis-new easily and correctly detected them.
Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?
#44I have been running an Exim4 email server servising several domains for many years, mostly without issue. I do have SPF configured and it is running on a commercial VPS server.
For spam defence I use grey-listing based on DNSBL lookups, some standards-enforcement ACLs and then SpamAssasin via MailScanner on the messages that get through.
Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is probably no help to you, but since you're doing this already, you may know. Is it feasible to self host your own email server but then use something like Mailgun for SMTP?
Yes. I do this. It gets rid of the spam folder problem while allowing you to host the incoming email yourself.
I might go down this route. Great advice! What service do you use? Thanks
Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?
#46You also need a DMARC record ( https://dmarc.org ) along with your DKIM and SPF records. Be careful testing your configuration when sending emails to the large providers, you can inadvertently score negative marks against your own reputation, which is hard to recover from.
And setup reporting and forensic reporting. I have a domain that seems to be the default for a botnet, so my daily reports from GMail and Yahoo! always include at least a few IP addresses attempting to submit as admin@[domain].
The reporting sets my mind at ease that those big guys are blocking it and that the (low) legitimate volume of mail to those guys is reasonable.
It's also interesting to note that with DNSSEC, DKIM, SPF and DMARC, the pattern seems to be that some large Chinese mail providers drop DNS responses to try to overcome the "-all" token in the SPF record and "p=reject" token in DMARC. At least the reports show that the authentication (by SPF/DKIM) failed, so that makes me sleep a little better.
Par for the course, I guess. :P
*edit: grammar
Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?
#47Linode + Postfix successfully for years.
Reverse DNS very important and the SPF
Linode have excellent setup documentation ( https://www.linode.com/docs/email/postfix/email-with-postfix... )
Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?
#48Using Postfix & Ubuntu on a Linode server, they have a very good how-to[0]. The main problem I have is filtering incoming spam on spam-assassin.
[0] https://www.linode.com/docs/email/postfix/email-with-postfix...
Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?
#49Receiving email is easy. Sending it is much harder. One of the things that is the most frustrating is that if you end up on a blacklist, or a large provider decides independently not to trust you, it's often completely silent when it blackholes all your outbound emails to that service. I've just moved over to a hybrid of hosting my own MX servers for incoming email, and forwarding all my outgoing emails to an email-a…
I might go down that route. What service are you using? Thanks
Personally, I use MailGun. They have a generous free tier (10,000 messages a month) that I've never exceeded for my personal use.
Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?
#50I did almost exactly what you describe and it works flawlessly, but I only send a small volume of mail (my own). Digital ocean droplet $10 a month, but it would run on a $5 one if you don't also have caldav/sftp/kerberos/vpn/etc there like me.
Fun Fact: Microsoft Exchange has no native support for DKIM and tons of business run that in house, often on 'business class' connections without correct reverse IP records.