Like the title says, I’m new to self hosting world. 😀 while I was researching, I found out that many people dissuaded me to self host email server. Just too complicated and hard to manage. What other services that you think we should just go use the currently available providers in the market and why? 🙂thank you
E-mail
Don’t host your own email server.
Just trust me.
Meh, been doing it for 5 years now with minimal issues. Had one issue come up where my domain was flagged as malicious, but was solved in a few days and some emails to security vendors.
I think it’s important that those who can, and are educated enough to keep it running properly do host their own. Hosting your own email should be encouraged if capable because it helps reduce the monopoly, and keep a little bit of power for those who want to retain email privacy.
I agree with KN4MKB. I’ve been hosting my own mail server for decades. Not one issue. I use that in lieu of a mail service provider (Google immediately comes to mind), as their EULA service agreement will tell you that - since you’re using their service, on their servers - anything goes. Read the fine print on Gmail, and you’ll see. 😉
Why?
I did it anyway some time ago and I’m really happy with it. I’m using my own email addresses for absolutely anything by now.
They are not hard to setup, easy to keep running (once going they pretty much just work). If you follow the right steps you can avoid being undeliverable and keep people from abusing your sending server (as a relay).
In my opinion, cloud storage for (zero knowledge) backup. Your backup strategy should include a diversity of physical locations. I had a house fire a few years ago. Luckily, my data drives survived, but if they hadn’t, my cloud backup would’ve been invaluable.
Don’t self-host email SMTP or public DNS. They’re hard to set up properly, hard to maintain, easy to compromise and end up used in internet attacks.
Don’t expose anything directly to the internet if you’re not willing to constantly monitor the vulnerability announcements, update to new releases as soon as they come out, monitor the container for intrusions and shenanigans, take the risk that the constant updates will break something etc. If you must expose a service use a VPN (Tailscale is very easy to set up and use.)
Don’t self-host anything with important data that takes uber-geek skills to maintain and access. Ask yourself, if you were to die suddenly, how screwed would your non-tech-savvy family be, who can’t tell a Linux server from a hot plate? Would they be able to keep functioning (calendar, photos, documents etc.) without constant maintenance? Can they still retrieve their files (docs, pics) with only basic computing skills? Can they migrate somewhere else when the server runs down?
lol
Also, check out “ciphermail”. It’s end-to-end encryption mail server.
A password manager because if anything goes wrong, you’ll be completely screwed.
What you SHOULD absolutely self host though is a password manager, so you can be in control of your most sensitive data.
Regarding email, I think everyone should absolutely self host it, but it’s less and less viable in this google/Microsoft duopoly world. But ideally everyone would self host it. The reason why people advise against it really comes down to lack of real competition, and the two tech giants dictating how we violate every RFC possible.
A password manager because if anything goes wrong, you’ll be completely screwed.
What you SHOULD absolutely self host though is a password manager, so you can be in control of your most sensitive data.
Wot?
People saying email, look into using external SMTP servers as relays. Your domain most likely comes with at least one email account with SMTP access. You can use that as a relay to send personal/business emails from your server using the provider’s reputable IP addresses.
the one you don’t use it
Smtp isn’t that bad so long as you ensure you’re not operating an open relay.
Really bad stuff will happen once exploited and it will take major work on your part to undo ranging from getting removed from block lists like XBL to possibly having to renegotiate your ISP contract if they have to get involved.
If self hosting from home… email servers
At home, your IP is likely blacklisted and/or your provider has blocked the necessary ports. Not to mention the layers of potential headaches dealing with potential spam block dbs, especially if you don’t own your IP.
You can of course do custom setups allowing you to skirt these restrictions, but can sometimes be a bit complicated and typically involve non-traditional customizations.
Email
A CDN
I giggled.
Then what is Lancache, if not a home CDN?
Not entirely true. All new OSX’s have content cache. Basically a home CDN for apple stuff.
While mail is definitely doable, imho it’s not worth the hassle, you’ll always have to maintain it, that’s definitely not a launch and forget solution.
Self-hosted internet is pain in the ass. Cellular services too.
email service
I’m doing it on a bm I rent for 10 years now without issues with spf, dmarc, dkim and everything from scratch (no docker bloat)
Docker is the antithesis of „bloat“.
Docker is horrid for duplication. Unless you use a filesystem with good deduplication, docker can hurt a lot on your storage. and even then it still can just not work often due to due to already deduplicated extent stuff
WTF? You obviously don’t understand Docker at all.
- Docker and Docker images provide the absolute mimimum environment which is necessary to run an application. Containers don’t have reserved resources, so only what is really used is used. A VM has a lot more overhead, as a whole computer plus complete OS are emulated.
- There is not much to deduplicate because there is no redundant storage going on. Only the bare OS essentials plus the app are stored. There are some base OS containers (e.g. Alpine Linux) which are <10 Mbytes in size.
- If containers themselves are “big”, you are doing Docker wrong and store data inside of a container and not externally of the container in volumes or the host filesystem. With the next container pull, that data would be lost.
- no idea what " just not work often due to due to already deduplicated extent stuff" is supposed to mean. That does not even make sense.
As someone who is wasting gigabytes upon gigabytes of data on Docker, get out of here with your stupid bullshit.
docker layers across containers are not duplicated properly if the images arent setup right which is the case for a significant amount of images.
The entire point of Docker is that way you can easily go and deploy these specific images that aren’t set up right. One cannot just say, "Well, don’t use those images, do something else, and do your own” because that completely defeats the point of Docker.
I had nearly 80 gigabytes of duplicated garbage. across my home system alone after after setting up things like surveillance, my nas, nitter etc.
Don’t come here telling me I don’t understand docker when you are the one who has no idea.
What do you even mean with „duplicated stuff“? Again, if your containers are too big, you are doing it wrong.
Push notifications.
It is fine hosting a service that gets requests then talks to FCM or the iOS version. But a service that one’s phone stays connected to 24/7 is really hard, and not kill one’s battery.
