"Kevin" == Kevin Stratton via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> writes:
I am looking for a cheap solution for the following: 1) Email server/redireector. I want to have a full custom domain and email addre0ss.
2) FTP server on the same domain as the email server.
Please no! Setup 'sftp' instead. This does require two IPs on the system since sftp (ftp over ssh) will take up one port because ideally you'd setup virtual users who can't actually login to the system...
3) GUI setup preferred, I do not want to invest the time (right now) to get this working as a 'ground up' project.
I'd think about Ansible, which lets you do repeatable test builds at home. The trick, of course, is getting your email setup working that way. There's a bunch of parts: postfix for SMTP incoming/outgoing dovecot for IMAP postscreen rspamd - spam filtering dkim - for singing your outgoing emails nginx - for hosting various files for google and others to check for you being who you say you are. Fun fun. And a bunch of other stuff. I'd actually suggest maybe you look at https://mailinabox.email/ do you your setup. I think if I had to do it again, i'd go that route. The most important part though, and the most annoying, if getting your VPS and making sure it's not in a spam block, or likely to get added into one. Its... painful. I've been running stoffel.org for 20+ years now for email and it's gotten harder and harder. Nowdays you need to have SPF keys setup in DNS, DKIM keys for signing emails, you want to make sure you don't relay anything any more, because that will get you banned. Which reminds me I need to stop relaying too. Sigh...
4) Total bandwidth needs should be negligible.
Very true, a mail server is pretty low bandwidth.
How would you approach this?
At a very high level, I am considering:
1) Dedicating a DDR3 (RAM) era Intel I3 P.C. (sorry, I don not know the generation) and installing NAS software with the appropriate docker plugins, if they exist. I do not know if this is even reasonable. Suggestions are appreciated. I am using a home ISP account. I am aware of DynDNS type services to get around the lack of a static IP. I do not currently plan on using this device as an actual NAS due to security concerns. If necessary, I will use sneaker-net to transfer data, although I am thinking about ssh or even RS232.
If you're thinking of running this at home on your home internet then you're in for probably a rude surprise. Most big mail providers tend to block home IP blocks and not accept email because the volume of spam from them is so high. I'm on a Linode droplet right now, but thinking of moving to something else.
2) Renting out space on a service like Amazon Web services. Maybe they have an image that is already what I want.
Again, those AWS IP blocks tend to get blocked and dropped because of the spam levels.
Any ideas/thoughts/experiences would be appreciated. I hope to be at the meeting next Thursday.
Happy to chat then. I'd suggest you going the postfix.org mailing list and look through the archives. If you do go with a VPS, you'll really want something with 2gb of RAM or more, because rspamd is a hog. Postfix and dovecot are simple. It's the getting others to accept your email that sucks. John