Running your own mail server is a lost art

I use MailCow. It's nice, easy to setup.

@retoor cows are sneaky animal who want to murder humans.

I would go full vegan if it means stop breeding these bloodthirthy monsters. Just kill them all.

so is grinding your own flour.

@tosensei i dont think grinding is that hard. You just need a giant grinder

Ask @retoor, she lives in a windmill.

Just imagine if don quichotte was dutch. So many giants

@ANTIASYLUMIST i recommend to just try it.

also: i don't mean in a windmill. i mean by hand. muscle power.

How many people do you know who can write their own HTTP parser (or would even attempt it)?

running your own mail exchange extends it :P

@ANTIASYLUMIST hi me.

yes cuz when i tried to look into it there are people selling you shit but not telling you how it works

modern existence sucks

@BordedDev 1 person I know, @retoor

I actually set up my own mail just last month. It's awesome cause I can get as many throw away emails as I want and no website has my domain blacklisted so they can't fight back... Good for those pesky Times when Websites block or don't allow +suffixes on standard gmail

@Demolishun including gzip compression support as well in Python as C including chunking / propfind / mkcol / upgrade websocket. Thank you very much 🌹

@Demolishun Yeah, she's cool that way, has a bunch of other stuff in her rlib as well. I haven't done it for HTTP but have done it for e-mail before

But still that's 1 (or 2 if you count the mail thing) of the 10-20 people who regular on dR

Careful @retoor your awesome is showing ;P

Art?

@BordedDev did it in java [twice] and in bash [once]. Http is easy.

@netikras Nice! And yeah it's all text, people can probably figure it out without looking at spec but still ask a recent (web)dev if they think they can make their own server.

Well, I'm happier with the ratio, consider my faith in people/devs restored

Nah. AI is very good at suggesting GNU/Linux commands of all kinds. GPT-4.5 did fix a lot of bugs in my Debian install over the last week. Forums with real people don’t even come close.
I can see it walking you through the process of setting up your own mail server.

@chatgpt walk me through the steps I need to set up my own mail server on my own Ubuntu server. Be brief. At every step of the way, suggest the command I need to enter into the terminal, accompanied with one sentence long brief description of what it does.

@kiki
1. Install postfix:
`sudo apt install postfix`
Installs the postfix mail server package.

2. Configure postfix:
`sudo dpkg-reconfigure postfix`
Configures postfix with basic settings.

3. Install dovecot:
`sudo apt install dovecot-core dovecot-imapd`
Installs dovecot IMAP server.

4. Configure dovecot:
`sudo nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf`
Configure mail storage location.

5. Configure SSL:
`sudo nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-ssl.conf`
Enable SSL and set certificate paths.

6. Configure authentication:
`sudo nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-auth.conf`
Configure authentication settings.

7. Restart services:
`sudo systemctl restart postfix dovecot`
Restart postfix and dovecot services for changes to take effect.

8. Open necessary ports:
`sudo ufw allow 25/tcp && sudo ufw allow 993/tcp`
Allow SMTP and IMAPS services through firewall.

9. Testing:
Use mail clients to connect to your server using configurations- SMTP (port 25), IMA

P (port 993).

ooo is that how mail servers work. Ok. Now I suddenly wanna write my own... in like 3 years. Def one way to keep your emails private

People running their own SMTP servers and not knowing how SMTP works is the reason I get so much spam messages.

@AlgoRythm oh?

@jestdotty misconfigured SMTP servers are everywhere and just forwards maliciously formatted messages because they are configured insecurely. It’s the #1 reason for email spam. That’s why they are usually routed through things like school servers if you trace it back

@AlgoRythm wild

@Demolishun yup. I bought the domain name for my IRL last name and later on realized it would be a cool idea to be john@smith.com (example)

I researched how to set up an SMTP server like that and one of the articles I read basically begged me not to for this reason. I’ll see if I can find it.