I also belong to the group of long time mailserver owners. I started it
way back at Debian 8, and upgraded along the way. The biggest time
requirement was at the beginning, setting up every thing properly. Since
then, I have had almost no problems at all, that couldn't be solved
reasonably quickly.
All that said, I also would concur with the voices that say, it might
not be worth it. The initial hassle of getting everything working
properly--like contacting others to unblock my ip, setting up fail2ban
(absolutely necessity!), amongst other things. Originally, it was mostly
to "see if I could do it." Then, over time, I started giving out
accounts to family members and friends. Also, it was nice to have
unlimited space, accounts, as I ever wanted. But, now, I am responsible
for all these people's emails, which is more weight than I would want,
because for me, email isn't so day-to-day requirement. But, others live
by email =) Like, I could shut down my server today, and it really
wouldn't affect me too much at all, however all the rest would be
devastated. hehe So, I am "baked in" now. I have to keep it going.
I just keep it running...
On 02/01/2025 23:31, Michael Stone wrote:
On Thu, Jan 02, 2025 at 06:28:47PM +0800, jeremy ardley wrote:
I have been running my own inbound and outbound mail servers for over
30 years using ISP connections. The only time I ran into trouble was
with gmail recently and only because of mismatched SPF records for a
domain I host.
You're lucky, and your ISP is IMO atypical. Most ISP dialup
(consumer/dynamic) IP ranges are identified and blocked by various
anti-spam filters. Many ISPs also block outbound SMTP. My ISP does
both, and provides (provided? I haven't tried it a decade) an outbound
SMTP server which rewrote the Date: header (because why not), making
it impossible to use DKIM at all. Static IPs can usually be
"unlocked", but it's another hoop to jump through and static IPs often
have a significant cost premium over dynamic IPs. Even if your ISP
lets you use your IP for outbound SMTP, if it was previously used by a
spammer you can forget it. For anyone just starting out I absolutely
agree that running a mail server isn't worth the effort. For those of
us who have been running one for decades, it at least provides a nice
excuse to periodically complain about what the internet has become.
