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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

#71

Post by jauer »

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…

It is very much "here be dragons" but a lot of that is because of legacy compatibility issues from when mail was delivered directly to local users.

If you don't care about local access (IMAP & POP is good enough, no mutt to the mail spool for you) Dovecot is a huge improvement on everything else. You configure it to listen directly for LMTP and use MySQL for user information and Maildir for data it's almost as easy as running a random php+mysql webapp. Even serverside filtering with sieve "just works".

The inbound SMTP/Spam filtering stack is still a PITA but that's because of security issues (spam).

DBmail (dbmail.org) is one rework that seemed sane but stores all messages in a RDBMS and I didn't want to deal with scaling it at work (little ISP, ~10k mail users, ~1.5 million messages per day including spam) but it was fine for personal use.

I've been playing with homegrown POP & SMTP servers that use a s3 compatible datastore as the backend but that's a side project. People go crazy over email so I really want a simple to operate, sane, zero point of failure mail system...

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

#72

Post by johnpowell »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #7

I'm going to have to try this out - I tried setting up a mail server once and failed because it was too difficult. Now I'm paying $30/year for service from NameCheap.

I set up my own by hand and it worked great for about a year. Then emails started to not get sent and incoming ones were vanishing too. Then it all went to hell and just completely stopped working.

I gave up and went to fastmail. Setting it all up wasn't a problem. Maintaining it was a nightmare.

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

#73

Post by _pius »

This project is up for Knight Foundation funding. If you want to see it funded, speak up here: https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/2014/submissions/mai...

The guy behind it, Josh Tauberer, also wrote GovTrack, which was (and still is) important for anyone who builds things with Federal government data.

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

#74

Post by ushi »

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 setup for years now without any problems.

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

#76

Post by coherentpony »

nfoz wrote: post #60
coherentpony wrote: post #33

Why has nobody just made a Docker image that anyone can download and use for free? Or even just a Dockerfile. That way it's a text file and people can contribute and improve the setup. Just my two cents. Edit: Looks like my idea is far from original https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7634677 >

> Why has nobody just made a Docker image that anyone can download and use for free? Because you haven't done it yet. :)

Touche :)

Hours in the day, unfortunately.

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

#77

Post by crucialfelix »

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…

Setting up mail servers is the one things I truly dread. Its truly barbaric. I cuss and froth at the mouth whenever I have to go down there into that postfix dungeon.

Its the reason I got into Puppet and Ansible - vainly hoping all those barbaric problems could be encapsulated.

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

#78

Post by crucialfelix »

chrissnell wrote: post #23

Be aware: Rackspace (and surely many other cloud server providers) intentionally submit their IP blocks to DNS blacklists to dissuade spammers from using their hosts to send/relay mail. I'm not sure if the other big players do this but it wouldn't surprise me. Same goes for most consumer-class cable modem ISPs.

One of my companies sends hundreds of thousands of emails a month from Rackspace servers. What can you tell me about this ? What blacklists, where ? We don't show up on any of the easily checkable ones.

We are of course CANSPAM compliant, use good email headers, unsub etc. etc.

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

#79

Post by marssaxman »

robomartin wrote: post #44
smacktoward wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does hosting your own email truly isolate you from government surveillance? Not by itself, no; the government can still get to you by getting access to the machine you host it on, or the switch the mail flows through on its way in and out from the outside world. Hosting your own just reduces the number of third parties the government can try to shake down to get access to your data.

I guess my point is that unless you have the machine in your home nothing really changes: They shake down the hosting provider and they are in. In other words, what's the difference between buying email service from GoDaddy and renting a VPS from them to host it yourself? Not being critical at all, just trying to understand if there's something fundamentally different about Mail in a Box that makes it more government…

What's wrong with installing Mail-in-a-Box on a machine that you physically control in your home or office, then?

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

#80

Post by sliverstorm »

Niten wrote: post #52
morsch wrote: post #9

Very nice. Comes with Roundcube so you've got a webmail client available. - DKIM signing on outgoing messages (opendkim). - The machine acts as its own DNS server and is automatically configured for SPF and DKIM (nsd). I remember many people running their own SMTP server used to have massive issues with their outgoing mail being silently or non-silently ignored or sent to the spam folder. Does this take care of this?…

> I remember many people running their own SMTP server used to have massive issues with their outgoing mail being silently or non-silently ignored or sent to the spam folder. Does this take care of this? "Mostly" really isn't good enough. Frankly I've had mixed results over several years of hosting my own personal email server, even with a valid PTR, SPF, and DKIM. Most SMB and personal email systems I interact with…

My only issue in the last 2 years was with Gmail, which I eventually discovered on accident was apparently because of my lack of appropriate ipv6 records in my SPF tag.

I didn't catch it for a while because so much of the email world simply assumes ipv4, but traffic happily exits my ipv6 interface when the destination supports it.

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