[TUHS] Who is running their own mail server and what do you run?

jason-tuhs at shalott.net jason-tuhs at shalott.net
Thu Sep 21 06:13:57 AEST 2017


> I tried running my own server on mcvoy.com but eventually gave up, the 
> spam filtering was a non-ending task.
>
> If someone has a plug and chug setup for MX I'd love to try it.

I run my own mail.  Linux and FreeBSD servers, running qmail (plus lots of 
patches) and dovecot (and local, direct maildir access on the servers, for 
users who want to run alpine or mutt).

The stackable filters concept in qmail (and other DJB software) makes it 
ridiculously easy to write plugins using the language/toolkit of your 
choice, so you can easily pass all mail through spamassasin, clamav, 
defer-first/gray-listing setups, RBLs, etc.  I spent some time on this 
setup years ago, and haven't really touched it since, yet it still seems 
to keep the spam down to manageable levels.

The real challenge in hosting your own mail seems to be on the outbound 
side.  Google seems to be pretty distrustful of small, hobbyist systems, 
even though none of my IPs has ever been used for spamming, and I took the 
time to setup stuff like SPF.  I haven't heard too many complaints lately, 
but for a while, I had a number of users complaining that their emails 
were always being marked as spam for gmail users...


  -Jason




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