[Discuss] email server in Linux

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

On 6/12/20 10:29 PM, Tom Luo wrote:
> Does anyone have experience setting a private email server in Ubuntu?

If you like Ubuntu I would recommend Debian instead. It is what Ubuntu 
was based on and they haven't ruined it as badly as they have Ubuntu.

I run postfix and dovecot on Debian.

But a warning: You are heading into very rarefied territory here. I like 
think it gives me some sort of elite bragging rights, but I suspect the 
reality these days is this is too obscure for that, it just makes me a kook.

I originally did it a zillion years ago because I could, and to learn. I 
keep doing it because I keep learning and I don't want to lose control. 
Sometimes I can go for long stretches and everything just works, but 
periodically the very rules for what is a properly run e-mail server 
change. That is a pain, but it also tends to keep me a little up to date.

Spam is a problem, I used to use spamassassin but on one server rebuild 
I left it off and now I just use client side spam detection, and it 
doesn't work very well.

If you do do it, you probably want to do it in the cloud (Linode, 
Digital Ocean, etc.). There is something nice about doing it at home, on 
you own box, but then you need a static IP address at home, one that 
isn't on spam blacklists, and I don't know a good solution to that 
anymore, My old DSL is going way up in price and down in reliability. I 
need to switch to something else and I don't know what.

Another suggestion: Don't offer e-mail addresses to others, or only to a 
very few (spouse...) because doing tech support can be a lot of work. I 
don't have an iphone, why can't my sister Google up out how to install 
my self-signed certificate herself?

Let us know what you do!

-kb