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Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#141

Post by jghn »

I used to and stopped just because it was a pain in the butt to keep my emails from getting flagged as spam all over the place. Several years ago I switched to using Dreamhost which was great for a while but I'm running into the same issues again, an increasing number of popular mail hosts are flagging emails from me as spam. Likewise Dreamhost has pretty much given up providing reasonable spam blocking tools.

I'm now considering something like a google organization account, or whatever it is called, where it's really gmail but with my domain name

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#142

Post by chrischen »

Nux wrote: post #59

It's absolutely possible to run an email server in 2016 and I encourage anyone capable to do so! Email is one of the bastions of the decentralised Internet and we should hang on to it. Every day more and more people are moving to Gmail/Hotmail/Outlook and while I do understand the reasons, it also puts more and more power into the hands of these providers and the little guy (us) gets more screwed (like marked as junk…

Any open source mail servers taht set all this up? Last I checked in 2011 there weren't any.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#144

Post by jghn »

jjnoakes wrote: post #134

PSA: If you run your own mail server and use that email address for password resets, please use a reputable hosting provider and dns provider, and turn on 2FA. Don't let that often overlooked weak point be the way every one of your accounts gets compromised. Once they have your email, they have everything that resets via that email domain.

Also make sure to use a different email address as your password reset email for your internet provider. In retrospect it sounds obvious but that totally bit me a while back.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#145

Post by loup-vaillant »

merb wrote: post #123
Nux wrote: post #59

It's absolutely possible to run an email server in 2016 and I encourage anyone capable to do so! Email is one of the bastions of the decentralised Internet and we should hang on to it. Every day more and more people are moving to Gmail/Hotmail/Outlook and while I do understand the reasons, it also puts more and more power into the hands of these providers and the little guy (us) gets more screwed (like marked as junk…

SPF, DKIM, DMARC could be dropped if you actually use aws ses to send your mails, you can actually forward the mails there. So it's pretty impossible that your messages will be in spam. The only thing you need to manage is incoming mail now and not being a open relay.

Hence defeating one of the main purposes of running your own mail server in the first place: decentralization.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#146

Post by reallyimran »

jwr wrote: post #131
Nux wrote: post #59

It's absolutely possible to run an email server in 2016 and I encourage anyone capable to do so! Email is one of the bastions of the decentralised Internet and we should hang on to it. Every day more and more people are moving to Gmail/Hotmail/Outlook and while I do understand the reasons, it also puts more and more power into the hands of these providers and the little guy (us) gets more screwed (like marked as junk…

> Email is one of the bastions of the decentralised Internet and we should hang on to it. This. I hope someone will eventually create an "E-mail server in a box" package for Ubuntu LTS, so that more people can run their own E-mail. I'm not saying it has to be super-easy for everyone, just that it should avoid unnecessary chore work (like configuring postfix to always use TLS, or plugging postgrey into postfix).

There is something you can do to install that : https://mailinabox.email/

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#147

Post by andrewaylett »

TheMog wrote: post #29

I've been running my own MTA for about 15 years now, so it's definitely possible without spending the majority of one's waking hours to do so. Even when I switched mail server IPs twice over the last few years I didn't run into the issues you ran into. A large part of it depends on where you run it - if you, say, run it on your home Internet connection that's usually an immediate strike against you because of the ins…

You are me, almost. I run a small amount of mail out of an OVH box with few issues; before that I hosted from my house on a static IP address.

I don't actually greylist any more, though -- I've found that postfix's protocol violation detection (postscreen[0]) is just as good, if not better, and I like my mail to come through immediately :).

Amavis is set up to do pre-queue filtering, which means that mail is either rejected or delivered (possibly to the spam folder), my server shouldn't be generating its own bounces or dropping messages on the floor.

[0]: http://www.postfix.org/POSTSCREEN_README.html

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#149

Post by sippeangelo »

jjnoakes wrote: post #134

PSA: If you run your own mail server and use that email address for password resets, please use a reputable hosting provider and dns provider, and turn on 2FA. Don't let that often overlooked weak point be the way every one of your accounts gets compromised. Once they have your email, they have everything that resets via that email domain.

Any recommendations for a reputable name server that has 2FA?

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#150

Post by pflanze »

noinsight wrote: post #114
Nux wrote: post #59

It's absolutely possible to run an email server in 2016 and I encourage anyone capable to do so! Email is one of the bastions of the decentralised Internet and we should hang on to it. Every day more and more people are moving to Gmail/Hotmail/Outlook and while I do understand the reasons, it also puts more and more power into the hands of these providers and the little guy (us) gets more screwed (like marked as junk…

I would suggest running OpenSMTPD over any of the alternatives, it's much easier to configure and should be/remain secure as it comes from the OpenBSD people (the audit from Qualys attests to that).

There was http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2015/q4/11

PS. maybe that's one of the vulnerabilities mentioned in the report (1). Anyway it's an argument for me to run Qmail/qpsmtpd instead.

(1) https://www.qualys.com/2015/10/02/opensmtpd-audit-report.txt

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