Building an ARM64 home server the hard way

I did the same thing with a nanomimal http server to serve static content and maybe dynamic in the future: a noscript/basic (x)html http server for maps (which uses openstreet map tiles), which does provide proper map display in links2, with a font not too big, and with harmless html tables.

Configured the "server" to restart everything if something is detected missing (you know, cron with SH scripts and certainly not bash scripts).

It has been running for years. I never had to modify the code of my smtp server, yet (and I run IPv4 and native IPv6 provided by default to millions of clients by my ISP, I think it has been the case for more than a decade, may be wrong about this one though). I am kind of surprise it was not already pown by some trashy hackers.

The main issue: spamhaus block lists, they are hostile to all self-hosted people and they don't provide a irc server, or a non blocked email to be removed from their lists (which are unfortunately used by too many open source related companies/project, which is a mistake). Basically, they force ppl to use one of google/apple super heavy javascripted web engine (no better than the default security checks from cloudflare). Yes, those ppl are seriously worse than spam itself, hope they will fix that (they are a shaddy swiss-andoran company...).

Did you know you cannot send an email to redhat(IBM now) people using an ipv6 smtp? yeah...

And it is coming: I'll move everything to a similar RISC-V mini-computer because I am aware of the super toxic IP tied to arm64 ISA (same for x86_64), that will be the first step, the 2nd step will be to hand compile (=assembly programming with near Zero-SDK) all of them and forget this C syntax too complex and those horribly massive and complex compilers, not stable on the long run (thanks ISO, gcc extensions and c++). And with all that, I would not be surprise to port to 64bits RISC-V assembly a minimal IPv6 stack... and maybe more.

In my own anecdotal experience of running a hobby server on Arch for several years, I haven't experienced anything to make me think the distro is unsuitable for server work.

The only ARM specific thing here is probably the need to use a DTB.

This just shows that manual Linux installation on random ARM board is not more complex than on x86_64. Perhaps even simpler, since you're just extracting a pre-made rootfs instead of using a package manager during installation.

Allow me to correct that for you.

There is nothing wrong with spamhaus. They provide one of the best anti-spam options amongst all the commercial providers.

Spamhaus have many lists, I suspect the one you are referring to is the PBL, in their words "DNSBL database of end-user IP address ranges which should not be delivering unauthenticated SMTP email to any Internet mail server except those provided for specifically by an ISP for that customer's use.".

We are in 2023, I think it is beyond any sort of doubt by now that a significant proportion of spam and phishing mails originates from home internet connections because people can't be bothered to keep their computers up to date and virus free, so they become part of a botnet.

So the fact of the matter is that even if Spamhaus PBL did not exist, someone else (or the MX operators themselves) would very soon fill their place by blocking the very same ranges.

Added to which, most home ISPs don't even provide reverse DNS ... so again, even if Spamhaus PBL did not exist, you would likely STILL find yourself being blocked by other measures that most sensible sysadmins implement on their servers.

Hell, many home ISPs just block outbound port 25 these days anyway !