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How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

c0ffee.net

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

#71

Post by ams6110 »

agentultra wrote: post #41

I run my own mail infrastructure. To say the least I wouldn't recommend it even to my worst enemies. It's horrible. Actually it's fine until it's not. Then your email doesn't work and you could be missing out on important communications. And then you're scrambling to figure out how the spammers managed to exploit your setup this time. And you have to learn a tonne of crap in order to manage it... and the text files!…

OpenBSD's smtpd has worked well for me. It's also available in a portable version.

https://www.opensmtpd.org/

Configuration is one file, very simple. It won't do everything a sendmail does, but it's never had me pulling my hair out.

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

#72

Post by StavrosK »

agentultra wrote: post #41

I run my own mail infrastructure. To say the least I wouldn't recommend it even to my worst enemies. It's horrible. Actually it's fine until it's not. Then your email doesn't work and you could be missing out on important communications. And then you're scrambling to figure out how the spammers managed to exploit your setup this time. And you have to learn a tonne of crap in order to manage it... and the text files!…

I'm entertaining the idea of running my own SMTP server for Spamnesty (https://spa.mnesty.com/) so I can at least cut down on some of the Mailgun invoice items. Would you still not recommend this if I were just sending mail to spammers?

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

#75

Post by Jaruzel »

agentultra wrote: post #41

I run my own mail infrastructure. To say the least I wouldn't recommend it even to my worst enemies. It's horrible. Actually it's fine until it's not. Then your email doesn't work and you could be missing out on important communications. And then you're scrambling to figure out how the spammers managed to exploit your setup this time. And you have to learn a tonne of crap in order to manage it... and the text files!…

My use case is different, as I'm a Windows guy, but this is what I've got:

1. Custom MTA that handles incoming SMTP.

2. SpamAssassin that is called by the above MTA which flags email as spam/not-spam.

3. Custom MTA forwards not-spam to the users inbox.

4. Custom MTA forwards SPAM to postmaster (this bit needs significant re-working)

5. Main Mailserver is Microsoft Exchange run On-Premises.

6. All Mail clients are Outlook 2016, or Android Phones.

The reason I had to write my own MTA was so that I could leverage a 3rd party anti-spam solution, as Exchange doesn't come with one, and add-ons for Exchange are quite expensive.

Running your own mailserver is a complete nightmare. If I knew it would end up this complex 20+ years on, I'd have never done it in the first place.

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

#76

Post by xienze »

ryanlol wrote: post #55
xienze wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fastmail will let you do it for $50 per year if you pay upfront. Just not sure why anyone would run an email server other than extreme paranoia. It’s hardly a set it and forget it affair.

Fastmail is great until their support hands your account over to some random person that just happened to ask.

https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html

They have a very strong privacy policy, they’re not just going to hand your email over to a “random” person.

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

#77

Post by perlgod »

mozumder wrote: post #73
perlgod wrote: post #27

Author here - happy to respond to any questions.

How much of this is common to a Mac OS Server mail setup?

I believe OS X uses many of the same components under the hood. I have toyed with OS X Server.app (mostly just to get the necessary certificates to get IMAP push notifications working with iOS/Dovecot[1]) and it seems like a really solid choice.

Not sure how you go about colocating a Mac Mini in a datacenter though.

[1] https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/dovecot-push-notifications

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

#78

Post by bluedino »

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.

Our mail server is hosted with BIG_HOSTING_COMPANY and we still get shittons of spam

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

#79

Post by ams6110 »

yosamino wrote: post #70
icebraining wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any server with such a short default? The RFC recommends at least 4-5 days.

Well, yeah... but if you have any people actually using the server, they will start calling you around day One asking about their mail. At least if the the mail get's bounced after a few hours only, they get some sort of feedback, instead of being left wondering.

To be fair, the post is about running your own email server. But yes, if you're running one for a business or other group of people, things become more complicated and demanding.

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

#80

Post by Yetanfou »

I've run my own mail server ever since I got something resembling broadband internet in 1996. Back then spam was non-existent, Sendmail was the emperor without clothes about to be dethroned and I hacked sendmail.cf without needing to look at the the bible [1].

I've never regretted running my own server, nor have I ever contemplated moving to a hosted solution. Spam is not a problem either, Spamassassin in combination with a greylist make for a nearly spam-free experience. The whole setup has been migrated from the original Pentium-66 via an aBit-BP6 (SMP for the masses [2], retired in 2009) to the current Intel SS-4200 (upgraded to a dual-core Pentium but still limited to 2GB). In practice a Raspberry Pi would be enough to run a viable mail server so even this rather anaemic setup does its job without breaking a sweat.

The whole setup consists of Debian (Sid) running Exim through a smarthost, feeding through Spamassassin + greylistd into Dovecot. Apart from some auto-manual intervention to cope with Microsoft/Google/... not coping with the greylisting and thus needing whitelisting it more or less just works. In other words, just go ahead and run your own server.

[1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596510299.do

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABIT_BP6

[3] http://ss4200.pbworks.com/w/page/5122751/FrontPage

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