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Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

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Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#71
post #32

If you're comfortable with command-line Linux, and have a basic understanding of DNS, setting this up from scratch is actually not all that hard. After researching the hell out of this a few weekends ago, the best guide I found on the subject is: https://workaround.org/ispmail/jessie Sure, it's technically for Debian, but if you're comfortable with Linux it's easily adaptable to other distributions. In order to get G…

I thought let's encrypt was only for domain names and not for email encryption. I'm a beginner in self hosted email.

I'm using spf and dkim, ip is not blacklisted, and the domain I'm sending from has a let's encrypt cert, but my emails still go to gmail spam. (Outlook also, but yahoo goes to the inbox)

Now that I'm thinking, the emails are sent using postfix through the fqdn (subdomain.example.com) which is not served by http and hasn't hot a cert.

If this is the case should sending the emails through example.com or add a cert to host.example.com work?

Or is there another mechanism to use let's encrypt certs for email?

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#72
post #32

If you're comfortable with command-line Linux, and have a basic understanding of DNS, setting this up from scratch is actually not all that hard. After researching the hell out of this a few weekends ago, the best guide I found on the subject is: https://workaround.org/ispmail/jessie Sure, it's technically for Debian, but if you're comfortable with Linux it's easily adaptable to other distributions. In order to get G…

> If you're comfortable with command-line Linux, and have a basic understanding of DNS, setting this up from scratch is actually not all that hard. After researching the h... out of this a few weekends ago, ... You make it sound hard, just there, or do I misunderstand?

Ah that wasn't my intention :) Personally, I had just kept hearing all these nightmare stories about self-hosted email and never really looked into it further. Until I went from zero familiarity with the options to having a working setup in a weekend. But it probably took me longer than it needed to, because I've been learning BASH at the same time and wanted a fully scriptable install process. And some time spent wrestling with nginx (for https webmail), which I was also new to.

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#73
post #71
post #32

If you're comfortable with command-line Linux, and have a basic understanding of DNS, setting this up from scratch is actually not all that hard. After researching the hell out of this a few weekends ago, the best guide I found on the subject is: https://workaround.org/ispmail/jessie Sure, it's technically for Debian, but if you're comfortable with Linux it's easily adaptable to other distributions. In order to get G…

I thought let's encrypt was only for domain names and not for email encryption. I'm a beginner in self hosted email. I'm using spf and dkim, ip is not blacklisted, and the domain I'm sending from has a let's encrypt cert, but my emails still go to gmail spam. (Outlook also, but yahoo goes to the inbox) Now that I'm thinking, the emails are sent using postfix through the fqdn (subdomain.example.com) which is not serve…

One of the things that tripped me up at first was the postfix settings. smtpd_* options are for receiving mail, and smtp_* (no d) are for sending. So you need

smtp_tls_cert_file = /etc/letsencrypt/live/$domain/fullchain.pem

smtp_tls_key_file = /etc/letsencrypt/live/$domain/privkey.pem

smtp_tls_security_level = may # or encrypt, to force TLS

Also, yes, if I understand you correctly your cert should include subdomain.example.com even if the web-facing content there doesn't use HTTPS.

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#74
post #73
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought let's encrypt was only for domain names and not for email encryption. I'm a beginner in self hosted email. I'm using spf and dkim, ip is not blacklisted, and the domain I'm sending from has a let's encrypt cert, but my emails still go to gmail spam. (Outlook also, but yahoo goes to the inbox) Now that I'm thinking, the emails are sent using postfix through the fqdn (subdomain.example.com) which is not serve…

One of the things that tripped me up at first was the postfix settings. smtpd_* options are for receiving mail, and smtp_* (no d) are for sending. So you need smtp_tls_cert_file = /etc/letsencrypt/live/$domain/fullchain.pem smtp_tls_key_file = /etc/letsencrypt/live/$domain/privkey.pem smtp_tls_security_level = may # or encrypt, to force TLS Also, yes, if I understand you correctly your cert should include subdomain.e…

Thank you, I've added a le cert for the fqdn and updated the postfix config and a test email went straight to gmail inbox!

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#75
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're comfortable with command-line Linux, and have a basic understanding of DNS, setting this up from scratch is actually not all that hard. After researching the h... out of this a few weekends ago, ... You make it sound hard, just there, or do I misunderstand?

Ah that wasn't my intention :) Personally, I had just kept hearing all these nightmare stories about self-hosted email and never really looked into it further. Until I went from zero familiarity with the options to having a working setup in a weekend. But it probably took me longer than it needed to, because I've been learning BASH at the same time and wanted a fully scriptable install process. And some time spent wr…

Ok, I see, thanks for the honesty!

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#78
post #74
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things that tripped me up at first was the postfix settings. smtpd_* options are for receiving mail, and smtp_* (no d) are for sending. So you need smtp_tls_cert_file = /etc/letsencrypt/live/$domain/fullchain.pem smtp_tls_key_file = /etc/letsencrypt/live/$domain/privkey.pem smtp_tls_security_level = may # or encrypt, to force TLS Also, yes, if I understand you correctly your cert should include subdomain.e…

Thank you, I've added a le cert for the fqdn and updated the postfix config and a test email went straight to gmail inbox!

No problem, glad to hear you got it working!

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you have SPF/DKIM in place and make sure your IP isn't already on a blacklist for some past (previous users) infractions you should be good to go. I've run my own mail server for years and have only had to remove it from a blacklist once. So once you get past some initial blacklist monitoring work, you are good to go. That does bring up the point of how to do blacklist monitoring. There are various commercial se…

Not something I can run, but http://www.mailradar.com/ seems like a better free service. They let you monitor 5 IPs for inclusion on blacklists which works better for a personal setup where you might have more than 1 domain but wouldn't have more than a couple VMs as the MX servers.

> First name is invalid (use min 4 characters)

But it's my name!

Re: Mail-in-a-Box – one-click, easy-to-deploy email server

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I stopped using my home connection because it was listed on Spamhaus' PBL, you might want to check that out if you plan on using yours: https://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/ I'm using DO currently and it's been working fine, though it's just for personal email.

I'm surprised to hear there are home ISPs that still allow outgoing traffic on port 25... I used to run an email server at home, and both ISPs I used required you to route all outgoing email through their SMTP server (which presumably had an outgoing spam filter on it). This worked fine for me because it meant my outgoing mail had a good reputation.

Why? I expect from ISPs to deliver IP packets to/from my address, without filtering on basis what is in payload.

Though once when device connected to my wifi got infected and started sending spam, I got angry (not e)mail from ISP, so I drop tcp/25 on my router firewall.

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