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Self-hosting email like it's 1984

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Re: Self-hosting email like it's 1984

#101

Post by stavros »

Krei-se wrote: post #77
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #57

(had to dug my comment from under a flagged parent) I self-hosted for well over 20 years, I did not throw the towel and I do not plan to. Self-hosting is a sign of pride. Neither my government nor my Prime Minister nor even my Ministry of Interior or Foreign Ministry can host their own email. Last time I checked, only State Security self-hosted. I was probably lucky, but I rarely had delivery problems. The last one w…

Configure the dmarc reports, they tell you a lot and automatically why someone swallowed your mail.

I'm thinking of self-hosting email sending for my applications. Does anyone know if, with DMARC/DKIM, email reputation moved from the IP to the domain? If I can make sure only my server can send mail from my domain, shouldn't the sending IP then be irrelevant?

Re: Self-hosting email like it's 1984

#102

Post by the_gipsy »

renehsz wrote: post #19
the_gipsy wrote: post #9

What about mail servers generally rejecting email (or marking as spam) from residential IP ranges? Decades of malware sending spam has spoiled self hosting emails. I needed some minimal mail delivery for user registration confirmation and password recovery, and I finally caved and just use some free service. It's okay since those emails are really, really, sparse in my case. But it sucks that email, this one old and…

Yeah, hosting on or at least tunneling through a commercial IP address is definitely required in order not to be flagged as spam. Personally, I chose the latter option of hosting my MTA at home but tunneling its traffic through a VPS in a datacenter. It's been working pretty well ever since, although I'm not sure it's worth the effort versus just using a cheap hosted provider.

Is it some kind of free VPS?

Re: Self-hosting email like it's 1984

#103

Post by commandersaki »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #57

(had to dug my comment from under a flagged parent) I self-hosted for well over 20 years, I did not throw the towel and I do not plan to. Self-hosting is a sign of pride. Neither my government nor my Prime Minister nor even my Ministry of Interior or Foreign Ministry can host their own email. Last time I checked, only State Security self-hosted. I was probably lucky, but I rarely had delivery problems. The last one w…

Email for me is a critical service, and the reasons I stopped self hosting after about 15 years is:

1. Because I couldn't ensure consistent backup and restore with regular monitoring,

2. no disaster recovery plan and in doing so it'd be more expensive than going through another email provider,

3. not always on top of security (my friend that I colo'd with also ran an email server and his system was struck with ransomware (with no backup [except a copy of email via thick client] or DR); I seemed to get away unscathed because I was using FreeBSD which generally less of a target).

I agree that it is little maintenance, but once you're off the happy path, it can be a huge pain in the arse and devastating.

Re: Self-hosting email like it's 1984

#104

Post by deejaaymac »

stavros wrote: post #101
Krei-se wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Configure the dmarc reports, they tell you a lot and automatically why someone swallowed your mail.

I'm thinking of self-hosting email sending for my applications. Does anyone know if, with DMARC/DKIM, email reputation moved from the IP to the domain? If I can make sure only my server can send mail from my domain, shouldn't the sending IP then be irrelevant?

Correct I often setup SPF/etc with the domain, no IP

Re: Self-hosting email like it's 1984

#105

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

IMHO, there are two components to "email" that do not necessarily need to be connected

1. receving mail

2. sending mail

Only #2 became difficult

Internet subscribers receive lots of email to which they never reply

Sometimes "throwaway" disposable email addresses are useful^1

Various third parties offer this as a "service", i.e., #1 is disconnected from #2

Self-hosting #1 can provide an alternative to using third parties

Generally, the only cost is a domain name registration

1. Also HN commenters have complained in the past that email sent via self-hosted SMTP to certain recipients, e.g., Gmail recpients, may end up stored on certain undesirable third party servers. This is because the recpient uses a third party for both #1 and #2, a so-called "email provider"

Re: Self-hosting email like it's 1984

#106

Post by gerdesj »

commandersaki wrote: post #103
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #57

(had to dug my comment from under a flagged parent) I self-hosted for well over 20 years, I did not throw the towel and I do not plan to. Self-hosting is a sign of pride. Neither my government nor my Prime Minister nor even my Ministry of Interior or Foreign Ministry can host their own email. Last time I checked, only State Security self-hosted. I was probably lucky, but I rarely had delivery problems. The last one w…

Email for me is a critical service, and the reasons I stopped self hosting after about 15 years is: 1. Because I couldn't ensure consistent backup and restore with regular monitoring, 2. no disaster recovery plan and in doing so it'd be more expensive than going through another email provider, 3. not always on top of security (my friend that I colo'd with also ran an email server and his system was struck with ransom…

DR: MX and retry

email has easily one of the best responses to failure modes ever and its ancient!

Most smtp daemons will put outbound emails in a queue and run the queue. If the other end is unavailable then it will generally retry on a schedule with some sort of increasing period and then give up after a week or so.

You can easily define multiple inbound relays via your MX records which predate SRV and generic TXT and are supported everywhere.

I've run a lot of other people's email, including my own vanity domains for decades. It really isn't rocket science.

Google and MS and Co really don't screw you around if you follow the rules and that largely involves only SPF being compulsory and the rest (DKIM n that) are nice to have. If you do send spam then you will be crucified and rightly so.

Email is not a critical (its important) service because of course you have several other means of communication starting off with the SIP n RTP server you also run ... 8)

Re: Self-hosting email like it's 1984

#107

Post by bongodongobob »

mey wrote: post #82
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #57

(had to dug my comment from under a flagged parent) I self-hosted for well over 20 years, I did not throw the towel and I do not plan to. Self-hosting is a sign of pride. Neither my government nor my Prime Minister nor even my Ministry of Interior or Foreign Ministry can host their own email. Last time I checked, only State Security self-hosted. I was probably lucky, but I rarely had delivery problems. The last one w…

> treat self-hosting like a hobby and learn to enjoy it. This is why I have stepped away from a lot of my self hosting. I have turned my attention/time elsewhere. Apparently though the time/money balance is shifting a bit again, so it may be worth it to go back. My biggest hesitance to self hosting email specifically is dealing with spam. What does that look like these days and do you have any pointers to share?

The biggest issue isn't necessarily spam, it's proving you aren't spam.

Re: Self-hosting email like it's 1984

#109

Post by commandersaki »

gerdesj wrote: post #106
commandersaki wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email for me is a critical service, and the reasons I stopped self hosting after about 15 years is: 1. Because I couldn't ensure consistent backup and restore with regular monitoring, 2. no disaster recovery plan and in doing so it'd be more expensive than going through another email provider, 3. not always on top of security (my friend that I colo'd with also ran an email server and his system was struck with ransom…

DR: MX and retry email has easily one of the best responses to failure modes ever and its ancient! Most smtp daemons will put outbound emails in a queue and run the queue. If the other end is unavailable then it will generally retry on a schedule with some sort of increasing period and then give up after a week or so. You can easily define multiple inbound relays via your MX records which predate SRV and generic TXT…

I agree with that aspect of DR; I guess I was more thinking of availability, in that I can probably handle a few hours of not receiving emails, but if it goes longer than a day or so then I'd be pretty miffed. Like I said it's all doable, but it requires a lot of effort, and is probably best not left to someone running a one man show, and once you have more than one person you likely now have to deal with trust and expenses.

I've run a lot of other people's email, including my own vanity domains for decades. It really isn't rocket science.

Again, so have I, and as I said the happy path is always easy, it's when things go wrong, and I'm not even talking about IP reputation or any of the usual issues that people bring up running email.

Email is not a critical (its important) service

Really depends; I still have many services such as banking where I need to use auth codes, also a lot of security is tied to my email in terms of private comms and recovering services.

Suppose your email service went down and the people you run email for complain, do you tell them "oh don't worry it's not a critical service, you can still communicate over other mediums"? Would that work for say gmail?

Re: Self-hosting email like it's 1984

#110

Post by gerdesj »

mey wrote: post #82
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #57

(had to dug my comment from under a flagged parent) I self-hosted for well over 20 years, I did not throw the towel and I do not plan to. Self-hosting is a sign of pride. Neither my government nor my Prime Minister nor even my Ministry of Interior or Foreign Ministry can host their own email. Last time I checked, only State Security self-hosted. I was probably lucky, but I rarely had delivery problems. The last one w…

> treat self-hosting like a hobby and learn to enjoy it. This is why I have stepped away from a lot of my self hosting. I have turned my attention/time elsewhere. Apparently though the time/money balance is shifting a bit again, so it may be worth it to go back. My biggest hesitance to self hosting email specifically is dealing with spam. What does that look like these days and do you have any pointers to share?

rspamd is my go to solution. Out of the box you get a lot of protection. I use Exim as my MTA but I suggest you use Postfix if you are starting from scratch, only because you will find a lot more write ups on it.

The biggest issue is getting an IP address which is not in the banned lists. IP reputation is key along with SPF and do not send spam!

In the UK a "business" static IP address is sometimes/usually/probably/might be OK. If you are unfortunate then it is already in the lists and you can check that out at point of sign up.

You might look into IPv6 too. I managed to do the Hurricane Electric IPv6 email thing on my home connection for a laugh. That was a few years ago. It seems I need to do something more to get to Guru status.

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