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Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

maddy.email

101–110 of 122 posts

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#101
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get around deliverability issues?

I have literally never (to my knowledge) been rejected by one of the big boys (i.e. gmail or outlook). Was quite nervous about it in the beginning, but I haven't run into any issues. I have had a number of bumps: 1. In exchanging emails with someone with a custom domain, I found there SPF record was broken and thus my server was rejecting their emails. I've weakened my policy and now their mail goes to my Junk, which…

Just to defend Dr. Percival a little here(since I have the same stance, though we do also support TLS), the RFC's require you to support non-encrypted SMTP. Since you HAVE to support it(not only per RFC but because in the real world so many SMTP communicators are stupid, lazy, or ignorant), there is little point in trying to make email secure. Until such time as everyone decides TLS1.3+ is required for SMTP, there is no hope, so why bother.

Our external auditors get all upset about it every single year, and every single year, I show them the RFC's and they then shutup about it for a year. If you feel strongly enough about it, try to get a RFC passed where SMTP requires TLS now.

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#102

Personally i use a mail server that's preconfigured and lives inside of a Docker container with all of the dependencies that it needs: https://hub.docker.com/r/mailserver/docker-mailserver ( GitHub: https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver ). With it, adding a new e-mail account is as simple as running a script with some parameters and it interoperates nicely with most clients such as Thunderbird or eve…

I tried it recently and was irritated that it doesn't play nicely with a existing LetsEncrypt instance on the host. Docker doesn't like mounting symlinks, and LetsEncrypt uses symlinks to point to the latest live certificate and key. I could configure Certbot (LetsEncrypt) on deployment of a new certificate to copy it to the Docker instance and tell it to load it, but at this point I just fished out my old Postfix and Dovecot configurations and notes and did it myself; at least this way I'm in complete control.

I do approve of such a project existing though, and if I wasn't running other things on the host I would probably use it.

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#103
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get around deliverability issues?

From someone else with similar experience: I've been following all best practices to the best of my abilities (rDNS/DMARC/DKIM/SPF/etc). After all that was properly in place, the only problematic receiver was Microsoft (outlook.com/hotmail.com/live.com), which bounced and provided an appeal process. I filled the form, was requested documentation from my ISP on the IP address. I asked my VPS hosting company (since the…

Regarding the Microsoft issues, what form did you use? I tried one but they never got back to me..

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#104
post #65
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you agree is not about the software but you did not implement best practices with Postfix. Also, whenever you give an address to someone else, family or friend, risk of going to spam increases. Links or src in emails without https, higher risk, Does Maudy prevent you from doing that?

It is definitely possible to configure something like rspamd to scan outbound messages.

And your sales people will call this a misconfiguration serious enough to fire the sysadmin who did this. The problem is that, typically, nobody trains or supervises the filter applied to the outgoing mail, and nobody is warned that it did, in fact, reject an email, and there is no manual override if the filter is, in fact, wrong. And spammers (from the viewpoint of a particular organization) don't exist and can't exist inside the organization, so any rejected outgoing email is, by definition, a false positive.

Well, viruses are the exception.

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#105

I've been using maddy as a personal and business email server for a while. Resource consumption is basically zero, no problems with sending or receiving emails at all. It did take me quite a few hours to properly set up a Kubernetes + Terraform config though. Getting all the bits and pieces for DKIM, SPF, DMARC right, including issuing certs via cert-manager, is quite finicky.

Are your .yaml & .tf files available somewhere?

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#106

This is a great initiative. The last time I remember setting up a mail server using Postfix or Dovecot was around 2015. It was a traumatizing experience. It rarely worked, all my email went to spam and I absolutely hated the amount of hackery and duct tape required to keep it working. Configuration files, missed emails... It was so unpleasant, to this day I avoid messing with mail on servers at all costs. I'd much ra…

I had great fun setting up Postfix and Dovecot recently. However, I was very specific with always going for the minimum most simple solution. I do not have a dedicated database for instance, but use just mbox and POP3. And I did not even bother much with anti-spam, I chose a super easy filter in Thunderbird instead, sending everything with 'unknown' in Received: header to the Thrash folder. Getting accepted by others…

> And I did not even bother much with anti-spam, I chose a super easy filter in Thunderbird instead, sending everything with 'unknown' in Received: header to the Thrash folder.

I realise that everyone hates spammers, but having a "thrash" folder is a bit much, isn't it? ;)

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#107
post #15

This is a great initiative. The last time I remember setting up a mail server using Postfix or Dovecot was around 2015. It was a traumatizing experience. It rarely worked, all my email went to spam and I absolutely hated the amount of hackery and duct tape required to keep it working. Configuration files, missed emails... It was so unpleasant, to this day I avoid messing with mail on servers at all costs. I'd much ra…

Your mail will go to Spam too with Maddy, this is not about the MTA.

My mail goes to spam using GSuite for my Domain for Work Gmail! (or whatever it's called these days)

Where do I even turn? Did my startup's domain get blacklisted before I've even launched?

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#108
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get around deliverability issues?

I don't run Maddy, but I do run email for an organization of a few thousand people. It happens on occasion from various providers, The larger organizations(MS,Google,etc) will spam your logs SMTP errors with a URL. You visit the URL and do whatever actions they want that particular day and life goes on. It's not hard, but it is a bit annoying sometimes. Generally if you have a static IP and you don't go being all stu…

So MS requires people with custom domains to run logging on their (possibly hosted and managed [by Google]) email server...and monitor it?

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#109
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some sort of web interface for self-hosted e-mail that is reasonably good and sleek/modern-looking like Gmail, and also works well on mobile with swipe gestures and everything?

The new Roundcube is pretty good these days

Quite good.

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#110

My one question: Caddy is known for effortless TLS, has it on by default and makes it "just work". Why can't Maddy also automatically set up TLS, instead of having to use a cert acquired by some other means?

https://github.com/foxcpp/maddy/issues/3 Here is the detailed discussion of problems related to automatic TLS configuration in email world.
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