Exercises in email self-hosting (1) Introduction

I am planning to write a series about email self-hosting.

The idea is to use a different approach. First start with a really simple setup, make that work, and try to make the users understand what is happening before going for a more complex setup.

I have been pondering about this in the last few days, and I think that a simple first posting could be about having a VPS or server with ssh access with Postfix for incoming email, using UNIX system account and no imap/pop3 server configured yet. We will look at the Postfix configuration, and use ssh and mutt email client to read the emails. From there we can slowly go step by step towards a more complex setup with SQL virtual users and with Dovecot handling the imap and pop3. And later in the more complex setup as well more anti-spam filtering, and things like SPF, DMARC.

One advantage of playing with a simple bare-boned setup is that trouble-shooting problems might be easier and the new stuff (Assuming one is not experienced at all with email self-hosting) will not come with an information overload.

To prepare to write the actual first simple howto, I'm planning to install and configure this on a virtual server in the coming weeks, test it and then write the first howto.

Stay tuned ! :)

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