Hosting your own E-Mail server?

Level1Techs INBOX.deb
#1

I saw in the latest inbox.exe that you could host your own private e-mail server. Can you guys make a video about this because I think that would be something cool to have setup.

#2

this is typically a PITA due to the amount of services that a "full-fleged" mail server needs to run.

the most crucial piece of code you need is an MTA (this is the piece of software that handles SMTP) such as postfix or exim. On top of that you might want to access your mail from other computers using POP/IMAP, spam filtering, antivirus, etc. Hosting your own server also means ironing out issues with DNS (PTR records). It is doable, but there aren't many advantages other than getting fine grained control of the services and having your data stored in a location you control. You could argue that there is some added privacy (especially if you provide other people with their own accounts on the server), but if you're going to be sending mail to gmail users (or other webmail providers) the NSA is going to read it anyway.

I have a few useful guides if GNU\Linux is your platform of choice:

http://sealedabstract.com/code/nsa-proof-your-e-mail-in-2-hours/

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Simple_Virtual_User_Mail_System

#3

You can also do it in a very easy way on linux, there is a specific distro cooked up by the friendly people of the University of Lyon in France, that provides a full mail server, application server (like instant messaging) and cloud server, all together and preconfigured in one stable linux distro.

It's called Yunohost, and can be downloaded (of course for free) from their site, yunohost.org.

Just because linux can be very simple...

Of course, you can also configure everything yourself and finetune it to your perfect liking and learn how everything works, which is always better, but for those not familiar with serious operating systems and computer systems, and in need of a quick solution for personal universal hosting... yunohost...

#4

You could easily VM that, right?

#5

Yup, as long as you can give your VM container direct access to a network adapter.