Ask HN: What are your/the best setups for running your own mail server?
What are the best setups for running your own mail server?
Which software? Postfix, Dovecot, Exim4
Which software? Postfix, Dovecot, Exim4
I particularly like Exim4's configuration on Debian. It provides IMHO very reasonable defaults, but allows overriding of most of these defaults using a mechanism similar to hooks. In that sense, the configuration is more like a framework.
This allows me to easily add my own configuration, while also not touching the default configuration as shipped by the Maintainer (and thereby avoiding nagging about a changed conffile [1]).
If using the split config format (ie, /etc/exim4/conf.d), it's not that complicated figuring out how to to a particular thing.
For example, [2] is the folder that contains Exim's ACL configuration. [3] is the file pertaining to SMTP's RCPT TO command. The individual features, and how to enable/disable/modify them, are well documented and the steps are usually trivial.
I don't use it anymore, but I remember that in order to set up a mail system with purely virtual users backed by a PostgresSQL database, I only needed to add a half-dozen or so of files, each containing small configuration snippets.
(Exim configuration is still complicated of course, to say the least. Debian just makes it a lot simpler.)
[1] https://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/21/debian-conffile-config...
[2] https://sources.debian.net/src/exim4/4.87-3/debian/debconf/c...
[3] https://sources.debian.net/src/exim4/4.87-3/debian/debconf/c...
I actually run gilani.me through ZohoMail's free options, I dropped pawnmail because it didn't offer DKIM, and mail-tester.com was giving my outbound emails a score of 2, which means it was very surprising that they ever got delivered, at all!