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  • Rolling your own email on linux in 2026

    From Nigel Reed@1:124/5016 to Bryn Hopkins on Sun Nov 8 18:47:16 2026
    Re: Rolling your own email on linux in 2026
    By: Bryn Hopkins to All on Wed Sep 09 2026 11:54:47

    Starting to put together all of my stuff on self-hosting, and while file backups are easy enough,
    email is something that certainly I want to do, but I question how well advised it would be.

    I set up a small postfix/sendmail instance years back in 2015, but I remember it being a small pain.
    There a trustworthy guide in 2026 or useful tips to know about rolling your own email beyond what's
    in the man pages?

    One word - mailcow

    So frickin' easy. After decades of struggling getting postfix, dovecot, spamassassin, dkim, spf, dmarc, webmail, web based management, fail2ban, and all that working, Mailcow is a complete docker solution that includes a web based management interface along with separate domain management and webmail logins. It is easy to maintain, and easy to update. Just needs tweaking to your needs and just update it from time to time. I wish I had found out about this years ago.
    --- SBBSecho 3.38-Linux
    * Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (1:124/5016)
  • From Nigel Reed@1:124/5016 to Bryn Hopkins on Sun Nov 8 18:55:51 2026
    Re: Re: Rolling your own email on linux in 2026
    By: Bryn Hopkins to All on Thu Sep 10 2026 22:20:56

    Thank you all, that's enough reading to keep me busy for a few days. Not having a static IP certainly
    seems like it would make this more challenging, but I'll start perusing mailcow/postfix's documentation
    and see what I can manage once I find a box/provider with a static ip and space that isn't blacklisted. Have had enough of gmail's bulls#!7 to be willing to part way with a bit more money and time to make this happen.

    I think I recommended Mailcow a second time :) Oh well.

    The problem with a dynamic IP is that you're going to have problems with your MX records if you want to receive mail.

    One option would be to run mailcow locally but use a cheap linux VPS as a forwarder using iptables or nft if you like.
    https://lowendbox.com/blog/1-vps-1-usd-vps-per-month/

    The other would be to use some dyanmic DNS service so your MX hostname is updated when you get an new ip.

    I run my own DNS servers and run OpenWRT which includes nsupdate so for me that's pretty easy, but I don't run my mail server at home.
    --- SBBSecho 3.38-Linux
    * Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (1:124/5016)