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So You Want To Host Your Own Linux Mail Server ...
Jeff writes "Recently, I moved my personal mail from a hosted Windows 2003 application to my own virtual Linux server. I now have nearly unlimited storage, full control over my e-mail and it's less than $10/month. Here's why I did it and here's how I did it. And I'm not a Linux geek."
Actually, it's a Virtual Linux Host, not a Virtual Hosting account. Although this might well be blatant advertising, there is an important difference between the two ideas.
Virtual Linux hosting is something new that uses UML (I think) to run several completely separate operating system partitions on the same machine. This means that rather than that horrid CPANEL thing you get with most virtual hosting accounts, you get a full Linux install that you can pretty much use however you want, installing new programs and running background processes and cron, using SSH, and so on. You can even have IP addresses assigned to your particular Linux if required.
This is much better than the standard HTTP/1.1 vhost package that most small-medium sized website hosts have been offering for the last few years.
From the second line of part two ("how I did it") of the article:
"I used the instructions below to guide me through the process of setting up a server at Redwood Virtual with the following components..."
And a little bit further down:
"I bought a personal account at Redwood Virtual. It's $10 per month..."
Setting up a linux box to host email is asked to be used as a relay.
No, it really isn't. I've been hosting email for a handful of domains for a few years now. No relaying, no intrusions, no problems. Spam filtering is done with a few RBLs and relaying is prohibited.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
> you have to provide at least two layers of spam filtering + antivirus filtering
Postfix is really good at dealing with spam, you can compile it with PERL-Compatible Regular Expression support and set up your first strong protective layer right out of the box. In fact, my mail server is only using regular expressions to catch spam and worms and it has been quite effective over time. Evem if for some reason you don't like PCRE, you can always use POSIX regular expressions for filtering.
> Setting up a linux box to host email is asked to be used as a relay.
Where tha hell did you came up with that assumption? Postfix is really good at preventing new users from deploying open relays. By default there is no relay at all, so if you ever need to relay, you can set Postfix to relay messages from your own domain, or set it to relay messages from your own network/host addresses. Whatever you chose is pretty well docummented in the bundled main.cf file, so if even after reading all those comments (and believe me, you have to, since that's the only way to understand the configuration) you end up with an open relay, the only thing I can tell is that you did it on purpose.
I've been very happy with Linode.com. They also have Gentoo and Mandrake images to start off with.
sudo -s surely?
Why would I want to spend $10/month and have to run it myself, when for less than $20/year I can have someone else do all the work for me? Since the article seems to be a case of free advertising, I'll point out that Slashmail will host your email for $13.95 a year. They allow unlimited email storage space, spam and virus filters, and secure access via various means (HTTPS webmail, IMAPS). Oh, and they use all Open Source.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
When I stepped up from shared hosting to a virtual plan I looked at two providers.
Tecktonic.net and JVDS.com. Ended up going with tektonic, and have been pretty happy with them. Support is top-notch and they use Virtuozzo instead UML.
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