I would love to count with your valuable help and suggestions.
Well, I am running my own web server for some time, and everything is going very well (Apache, PHP-FPM, MySQL, Fail2Ban, etc, etc).
And I really wanted to spin up a new server just to host my own email server, using Mail-in-a-Box.
I know that this is perfectly possible and have already read a lot of documentations. I have the new server in my hands, moreover, but something is preventing me: fear.
I also read and heard from some people to “not do this”, i.e., to never even try to run my own email server, due to several problems, blacklisting, spammers, etc, etc.
Well, unfortunately all of the negative comments I heard surpasses the positive ones, at least in my mind, and I am now really very afraid to start setting up my own mail server using Mail-in-a-Box.
So I decided to come here at the software forums to try to learn and see your suggestions and opinions regarding this matter.
Any help and information would be very greatly appreciated!
Hi, if you run a standard install of MIAB, there is little to fear. The standard install keeps itself up-to-date, is at least as well protected as most systems, and includes all the usual protections. And there are many people running it, so any problems would be noticed and fixed promptly.
Build-it-yourself mail servers are much more problematic. The bad reputation of mail servers comes from long history of people not securing their server properly, and not knowing how to config email properly. (Email involves lots of different things and is quite complex.)
Note - MIAB needs it’s own machine (virtual or physical). I’d avoid putting other software on that machine - MIAB updates might conflict with other software. You will need a “clean” IP address and full access to the internet - some of the big virtual machine services provide addresses that are blocked, or block certain ports - see the install instructions and other forum posts, for providers to avoid and questions to ask Finally, you might initially have some trouble sending to users on google/microsoft, but those problems can be fixed and are discussed in the forums.
Give it a go. It’s interesting, useful, and you’ll be independent.
Thank you very much for your informations and kindness. Much appreciated!
So, I really intend to run a standard install of Mail-in-a-Box in a separate server. Very good to know things works this way and that MIAB update itself.
I was really afraid, but I will try, once I really love this kind of things and, well, it will be certainly useful and interesting! Thank you once again!
I can only agree with @Andrew. Getting started with MiaB is really easy if you have some basic linux knowledge and most of the questions I had were already answered on the forum or very quickly by others.
Since I also was very conservative, I warmed up my IP with a 2nd dummy domain as it allowed me to test and reinstall. Once I was confident I had no email delivery issues I made the jump and never looked back.
Just make sure you get a good VPS with no reputation issues.
Really, I think the same way, and, well, I have already started everything (and found my first issue ). But I’ll insist, because I really love these things and need some independence on this matter.
Well, I have done exactly this. About the name servers, I’ve created the two NS entries regarding the above.
But when running dig norec @a.gtld-servers.net. ns1.box.domain.com the authority section still returning “ns-cloud-b1.googledomains.com.”, etc, etc
I really don’t know if this is right and/or if I can continue with Mail in a Box installation.
The video is really amazing. But everything I done it is equal to what he done.
The only thing missing here is the reverse DNS, but this because Linode does not left me to change that (they say they cannot perform a lookup to my box address, i.e., box.domain.com).
