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How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

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Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#21

Post by twothamendment »

Torgo wrote: post #7

I started running my own email server around 2014. I am using every mitigation I can find, but I still get an unending torrent of spam that slips through. If tweaking spam filters and deleting spam is your idea of fun, then run your own email server.

I've been running since 2001. There were some rough years in there with spam and big providers rejecting for no good reason. Now it has been years since I've had any delivery issues. As for spam, I get 2-3 a week that make it through, but I don't make any effort to tweak it.

Thanks for bringing up the painful memories of adding new filters each night. So glad those days are over for me.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#22

Post by dmm »

Torgo wrote: post #7

I started running my own email server around 2014. I am using every mitigation I can find, but I still get an unending torrent of spam that slips through. If tweaking spam filters and deleting spam is your idea of fun, then run your own email server.

FWIW, I've run my own mail server for 10 years and I hardly ever receive spam, maybe 1-2 a week. And I give out my email everywhere.

The only spam mitigation I use is greylisting and blacklisting.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#23

Post by perlgod »

twothamendment wrote: post #14

Icing on the cake: Sprinkle a little Let's Encrypt in there to cover SSL. It doesn't take much to have a cron make a new cert and restart dovecot and postfix. My setup is similar, but it uses MySQL instead of LDAP. I love being able to make aliases and even better - deleting them when I'm done with them.

Author here - I plan on switching to Let’s Encrypt once they support ECC certificates.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#24

Post by Torgo »

herbst wrote: post #2

Usually you are supposed to add a year to older articles :) Curious if you looked into other mail server options? I mean Postfix (not Postgres) easily handles the load of a single user, but it is still rather hard to configure and modify. I recently started to work with Haraka and even thought its ment for high traffic use cases i wont ever look back to Postfix (not Postgres).

OpenSMTPD is by far the easiest to configure, and has very secure default settings. It works very good for a single user server.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#25

Post by lucb1e »

> on FreeBSD using Postfix, Dovecot, Rspamd, and LDAP.

That seems like an awful amount of work / overkill. This is not a good introduction for a normal geek, and die-hard open source fans will figure it out without too much trouble anyway.

Postfix is not the best choice for novices, FreeBSD is not the most well-supported/documented system just because it's not as popular as some others, and a directory service shouldn't be necessary.

We had to setup Exim, Postfix or Sendmail for school. Sendmail was universally hated the most, Postfix came in second, and Exim was... well, not exactly logical or easy, but the best of the three mainstream MTAs.

I'm running hMailServer at home. Windows-only, unfortunately, but until I find a proper replacement, I'll just keep running it in a VM. Nothing else even comes close in admin-friendliness. It's just install and run, with either a local admin interface or a web interface (using PHP, so it runs anywhere).

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#26

Post by zuck9 »

perlgod wrote: post #23
twothamendment wrote: post #14

Icing on the cake: Sprinkle a little Let's Encrypt in there to cover SSL. It doesn't take much to have a cron make a new cert and restart dovecot and postfix. My setup is similar, but it uses MySQL instead of LDAP. I love being able to make aliases and even better - deleting them when I'm done with them.

Author here - I plan on switching to Let’s Encrypt once they support ECC certificates.

Why do you need ECC certificates?

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#28

Post by perlgod »

zuck9 wrote: post #26
perlgod wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here - I plan on switching to Let’s Encrypt once they support ECC certificates.

Why do you need ECC certificates?

I don't need them, I just prefer them. They are arguably more secure and require much lower CPU usage.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#29

Post by viperscape »

dmm wrote: post #22
Torgo wrote: post #7

I started running my own email server around 2014. I am using every mitigation I can find, but I still get an unending torrent of spam that slips through. If tweaking spam filters and deleting spam is your idea of fun, then run your own email server.

FWIW, I've run my own mail server for 10 years and I hardly ever receive spam, maybe 1-2 a week. And I give out my email everywhere. The only spam mitigation I use is greylisting and blacklisting.

What do you use for the mail server? Do you do any sort of backups or failover? Just curious

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#30

Post by fmos »

Torgo wrote: post #7

I started running my own email server around 2014. I am using every mitigation I can find, but I still get an unending torrent of spam that slips through. If tweaking spam filters and deleting spam is your idea of fun, then run your own email server.

For me, rspamd with corresponding exim-acls practically solved that issue since 02/2016. Spam is mostly rejected, otherwise tagged (and filtered with dovecot-sieve downstream into a review-box) or - if borderline - greylisted. Have had no false positives I'm aware of and only 1-2 false negatives per week slip through that cascade.

edit: Although some training (i.e. manually moving spam to IMAP-Junk) was necessary during the first few months.

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