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

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 01:13:57PM -0700, jason-tuhs at shalott.net wrote:
> 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).

I run my own e-mail as well.  I use Debian Stable on Linode, using
dovecot, exim, and spamassassin.

> 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...

The big thing is to use SPF and DKIM (I use opendkim), and to make
sure your IP address (or IPv6 address block) is clean.  If it is not,
you might have to ask your hosting provider to give you a clean IP
address.

					- Ted