Re: [Hampshire] TRYING to set up my own simple mail server? …

Vic wrote:
>> I can even setup my mailserver test box with SSH so that anyone that is good
>> at this stuff could possibly have a look?
>>
>
> You'll learn a lot more if you get it working yourself.
>

I set up a mail server at a time when ISPs weren't terribly good at
filtering spam and when I wanted to have a lot of control over what
arrived in the family's email inboxes.

The first setup was Exim on Debian Sarge and ran trouble free for 18
months or so. My providers got better at handling spam, I got cheesed
off with running a mail server at home and so I stopped using it
eventually and swapped back to my ISP's solution. IIRC it was around the
time I started thinking about UPS and off-site backups!

Later on I did have a play with an earlier version of the tutorial
referenced in the original post, and got it working with a little help
from the list. I thought it was anything but simple, although more
experienced folks out there might disagree with me.

Anyway, the point is, what is the driver for hosting your own mail
server? Referencing the quote from Vic above, if you can't set it up
you'll probably struggle to maintain and troubleshoot it further down
the line, and if there is any business dependency on the system, that is
probably somewhere you don't want to go.

Indeed, one of the reasons I stopped hosting my own mail server was the
feeling that, following a disk failure or some other catastrophe, I
would need to fix the problem quickly, which is fine if you're at work
and being paid to do it, but is another thing altogether at 10 o'clock
on a Monday night after a hard day.

That's not to say you shouldn't do this, but rather to give you pause
for thought before you take on a role you're not quite ready for.

If you do decide to forge ahead, give some thought to getting a good
provider who can supply a static IP address and also to the
responsibilities that go with hosting a mail server and keeping out the
spammers. Have a think about a dedicated machine that doesn't get used
for much else, and think about setting yourself up with a virtual
machine to test updates and changes before they are pushed on to the
live mail server.

Sean