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Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

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Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#141

Post by pjc50 »

I used to run my own mail server. I stopped because of two reasons:

1) You have to be your own 24-hour support, or accept that you will lose or bounce mail. You can be stuck with realising that it's failed while you're on holiday.

2) You have to be your own antispam. I've had my own email domain for fifteen years; it's on basically every spam list out there. Gmail is very good at this. At the moment I rely on my hosting provider who filters out most but not all of it.

3) You can have tedious issues delivering outbound mail, even if you're not using SPF.

In my opinion the right level to run email is "small cooperative" (10-100 users), where cooperatives share software, experience and maybe even staff but are administratively and physically separate.

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#142

Post by baudehlo »

selvan wrote: post #135
thisishugo wrote: post #16

It remains a constant frustration to me that Postfix, Exim, Cyrus, Dovecot and the like still feel as if they belong very much in the "here be dragons" territories of the Unix world. Configuring these systems is an exercise in constant frustration and bafflement. They're such a pain to use that since becoming the sysadmin in charge of our work email servers, I gave up running personal ones as well and just pay FastMa…

Do anyone have thoughts/feedback on Haraka - a mail server used by craigslist http://haraka.github.io/ ( Runs with Node.js + Javascript based plugin system )?

I think it's great :)

On a serious note - you'll find the Haraka developers more friendly and active than any other MTA out there. Just join the #haraka IRC channel on freenode and we're happy to help anyone.

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#143

Post by uuid_to_string »

hug wrote: post #125
uuid_to_string wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is that many years ago certain people decided it would be a good idea to tightly couple email to domain names (DNS). Previously email needed only IP addresses to work. The result is that now when you are configuring SMTP you have to also configure DNS. That means more things that can go wrong, and more things to check as you are setting things up. It also means you may need to pay a fee for a doma…

DNS is not the issue with mail and MTAs. Setting up an MX record is something you can do after googling and reading for about ten minutes. I have only anecdotal evidence to prove this, but that's basically how I set up my own first mail server. What was a lot more difficult was setting up the actual mailserver itself. Even a simple, two-mailbox-operation was an exercise in frustration when it came to trying to get ma…

Thank you for being honest.

But I am actually referring to something different: hosting your own mailserver.

So when I say "set up DNS" I mean set up a DNS server, not simply an MX record. This allows you to create your own domain names and hence email addresses. As I said above, these email addresses are valid so long as you and the recpipient use the same DNS root (e.g., ICANN's root in the case of the public internet).

As bad as things are in terms of the relative difficulty of setup, I think there are defenders of the status quo for email and I imagine this explains how I could be downvoted for my comment.

Don't get me wrong, I love email. It is the reliance on others to handle 100% of it that troubles me. It is purely a control issue.

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#144

Post by CraigJPerry »

moe wrote: post #117
CraigJPerry wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Postfix is actually a beautiful piece of software Couldn't agree more. I've also learned a ton from the source code. If anyone has even a passing interest in security, i'd highly recommend browsing the postfix source code.

No. Just no. The architecture is, at best, an anachronism. Designs of much more elegance have been explored (qmail). But as a matter of fact, neither postfix, nor qmail, nor exim, nor (god forbid) sendmail belong into our day and age anymore (I have run 3 of them at scale). A modern MTA is way overdue. Please keep writing MTAs kids! In modern languages. Until you get one right. Thanks!

Are you talking about the interface to the sysadmin - the fact we see the nuts and bolts in master.cf? This is of course an unfortunate side effect of the power and flexibility on offer.

What i was trying to dig at was more about the code than the user facing side of things.

It beautifully modular. It clearly written - that's a crazy hard achievement for software as committed to security as postfix.

It's dead easy to hack on the code - you could arrive and even without looking at the first class documentation you would be able to tackle implementing a change. The source is that thoughtfully laid out.

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#145

Post by moe »

corford wrote: post #130
moe wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Just no. The architecture is, at best, an anachronism. Designs of much more elegance have been explored (qmail). But as a matter of fact, neither postfix, nor qmail, nor exim, nor (god forbid) sendmail belong into our day and age anymore (I have run 3 of them at scale). A modern MTA is way overdue. Please keep writing MTAs kids! In modern languages. Until you get one right. Thanks!

Sorry moe but yes, just yes. It's rock solid, battle hardened, has a fantastic security record, is extremely resource efficient, has gobs of up to date and useful documentation, an active mailing list, a primary author who's stuck with it since conception (unlike DJB) and offers enough flexibility to reliably support virtually any mail setup you care to dream up. I can't see why in the world anyone would advocate thr…

So we can write configs in JSON and get a 'free batteries included' web management console for monitoring queue lengths?

Yes. Exactly that.

Postfix requires the user to understand pretty much all of its delicate (and often very much ass-backwards) abstractions at once, to accomplish even the most trivial tasks.

Aliases vs virt aliases, transports, the six dozen magic interactions of $mydestination, $myorigin etc. with one another and everything else, ... don't even get me started...

Nothing is easy in postfix. Everything is deeply entangled, counter-intuitive and error-prone. And there is absolutely no reason it has to be that way.

See what elasticsearch did for FTS. This is how software is designed today.

I'm not bashing Postfix, it's still a workhorse. But let's not be sentimental about software. Being better than sendmail simply is no longer the big deal that it was in 1998.

Today I expect my MTA to be all that postfix is, and easy to use.

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#146

Post by uuid_to_string »

nodata wrote: post #132
uuid_to_string wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we discussing control of email, or aesthetics of email? If you want to use names instead of numbers, then you can do that. You and your recipient must use the same DNS root.

You said using names instead of ip addresses was "part of the problem". ip addresses are normally non-portable, and difficult to remember and type.

No, you said that. I said that having email so closely coupled to DNS is part if the problem.

I'm not sure why you would have to remember IP addresses. We routinely "dial" telephone numbers by selecting from a list of contacts. IP addresses are approximately the same length as telephone numbers. The folk wisdom is that people can remember about 7 digits. But even if you disagree on all of this, what does that have to do with letting someone else control our email? The issue here is control, not whether we use names or numbers or something else when we enter the address of the recipient.

The nonportability of IP addresses is a problem in its own right, but I don't see the relevance here. Again, you are trying to engage me in a debate over domain names versus IP numbers. Perhaps that is an interesting issue, but here I am interested only in the issue of control over email (and because email and DNS have been coupled together, DNS). And that is what the OP is interested in as well.

I said that email and DNS are closely linked and this makes email more challenging for any user to control. 1. Because it complicates the setup and 2. because DNS as we currently accept it is controlled by third parties.

You are trying to suggest that I am advocating against having email addresses that use names instead of numbers. I am not.

If email is linked to DNS, and someone else controls DNS, then you cannot control email.

If you disagree with the preceding statement then please explain.

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#147

Post by kkmickos »

ushi wrote: post #74
thisishugo wrote: post #16

It remains a constant frustration to me that Postfix, Exim, Cyrus, Dovecot and the like still feel as if they belong very much in the "here be dragons" territories of the Unix world. Configuring these systems is an exercise in constant frustration and bafflement. They're such a pain to use that since becoming the sysadmin in charge of our work email servers, I gave up running personal ones as well and just pay FastMa…

I experienced something completely different. I set up a postfix/dovecot/ldap/nginx/roundcube/spam/... for a medium sized office with some special needs last month and was amazed how easy it is. Especially postfix and dovecot are a breeze to work with. The main problem was, that you can do everything in X different ways and have to think careful which way you want to go. In addition i am running a very simple private…

That is exactly why I love postfix/dovecot, there are X ways to do it and I can get it to fit my specific needs perfectly.

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#148

Post by corford »

moe wrote: post #145
corford wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry moe but yes, just yes. It's rock solid, battle hardened, has a fantastic security record, is extremely resource efficient, has gobs of up to date and useful documentation, an active mailing list, a primary author who's stuck with it since conception (unlike DJB) and offers enough flexibility to reliably support virtually any mail setup you care to dream up. I can't see why in the world anyone would advocate thr…

So we can write configs in JSON and get a 'free batteries included' web management console for monitoring queue lengths? Yes. Exactly that. Postfix requires the user to understand pretty much all of its delicate (and often very much ass-backwards) abstractions at once, to accomplish even the most trivial tasks. Aliases vs virt aliases, transports, the six dozen magic interactions of $mydestination, $myorigin etc. wit…

It's interesting that you brought up ES actually as I've just been toying with it as part of a project I'm working on (I usually use Solr). Unfortunately, I hated it so I guess we just have very different views on what constitutes a good approach to software.

Things I didn't like with ES include:

- Awful documentation (even the newly released guide) and too much marketing speak. I constantly felt like I was reading a brochure rather than a man page.

- I found it opaque and difficult to get clear, concise info on how it's put together and what it's doing under the hood.

- Marvel was nice but it's a shame they charge for it (it's not _that_ nice)

- The install routine (in an effort to be super simple I guess) just felt wrong and needlessly over simplified (I didn't like it making decisions without telling me what it was doing).

And more...

I will concede that working with ES's config files is a lot nicer than dealing with Solr's XML though! And in case you're in any doubt, I am by no means an enormous Solr fan either.

Anyway looks like we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one :)

Edit: also, I am occasionally prone to a bit of sentimentality for good, older software (it took me far too long to give up on apache and embrace nginx for example) - so there's definitely a little bias on my part!

Edit 2: If you could get Salvatore Sanfilippo and Igor Sysoev to team up and build a modern MTA, that would interest me :D

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#149

Post by unstoppable »

thisishugo wrote: post #16

It remains a constant frustration to me that Postfix, Exim, Cyrus, Dovecot and the like still feel as if they belong very much in the "here be dragons" territories of the Unix world. Configuring these systems is an exercise in constant frustration and bafflement. They're such a pain to use that since becoming the sysadmin in charge of our work email servers, I gave up running personal ones as well and just pay FastMa…

I dread having to set up mail servers. Setting up a typical dovecot + postfix install with a webmail frontend that looks as good as gmail should be as easy and simple as setting up wordpress, but it isn't even close.

Re: Mail-in-a-box: easy to set up modern SMTP/SMTPS server stack

#150

Post by moe »

corford wrote: post #148
moe wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we can write configs in JSON and get a 'free batteries included' web management console for monitoring queue lengths? Yes. Exactly that. Postfix requires the user to understand pretty much all of its delicate (and often very much ass-backwards) abstractions at once, to accomplish even the most trivial tasks. Aliases vs virt aliases, transports, the six dozen magic interactions of $mydestination, $myorigin etc. wit…

It's interesting that you brought up ES actually as I've just been toying with it as part of a project I'm working on (I usually use Solr). Unfortunately, I hated it so I guess we just have very different views on what constitutes a good approach to software. Things I didn't like with ES include: - Awful documentation (even the newly released guide) and too much marketing speak. I constantly felt like I was reading a…

Now that's an interesting comment, thanks for that.

I'll probably come across as arrogant now (sorry), but your critique of ES sounds almost ironic to me.

It's especially curious as you do claim experience with SOLR. Have you ever scaled it beyond a single core?

I'll go on a limb and claim that most of what you perceive as opaque in ES is likely magic that actually works. The rarest kind.

Yes, Marvel is not optional to run a meaningfully sized cluster. But where is Marvel for SOLR again? Where is automatic clustering and balancing? Oh, it doesn't exist?

Sure ES isn't perfect. But it's one generation ahead of SOLR. And Postfix is one generation behind SOLR. That's all I'm saying.

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