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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • Few weeks late to pitch in now but I can +1 docker-mailserver.

    It has almost everything included and the configuration files are quite straightforward and flexible enough that you can drop little edits into the individual services if you need to tweak something.

    My setup is very close to what you want: I use fetchmail to pull in from my old gmail and yahoo inboxes, I also have my own domain so I configured the MX records so that emails go straight to my server, with a fallback to my email provider (any mail that doesn’t make it directly to my mailserver will still get pulled into my inbox with fetchmail when it comes back online).

    Docker-mailserver allows you to set the SMTP of your instance to use your provider. This is important because it means that they do all the reputation stuff so that your emails work properly (and both my home ISP and my VPS provider don’t do sending over pot 25 anyway).

    So when I need to connect a new client (like Thunderbird) to my email I don’t need to manually config anything as docker-mailserver has all the auto config messages so its really seamless. At the same time my risk is low because even if my sever is off my provider will still receive anything on my behalf. I can only send using the username I have paid for from my provider and switching between gmail and yahoo is not possible without rewriting configs and restarting services but its not something I want anyway. On the receiving side I can have any number of aliased usernames that will all be received by my server (but only when its on so i use them rarely and for disposable addresses).

    Big downsides are:

    • backups are now my problem as I don’t keep duplicates.
    • I route my traffic via a VPS+VPN to get a static public IP address - this was a headache to get all the little details just right but its stable now
    • I have to host separately my own webmail, although I’m mostly using my phone with k-9 Mail and Thunderbird (I use roundcube)
    • Getting server side filtering rules working was also annoying and so far I still have to add new rules through roundcube (there was a plugin for Thunderbird but I don’t want to open the additional ports required)
    • !!! Spam !!! Docker-mailserver has a great Rspamd default settings out the box so its actually fine but now I have to manage all the additional rules and its not super intuitive especially because I am doing all this just for myself (yay!) but the tools are clearly meant for managing a fleet of inboxes so everything takes me longer to figure out
    • integrating contacts is not included and might be important for your experience (again I was able to add this as a plugin to roundcube … eventually)

    Most of my complaints stem from the fact that I’m not very good at this but in the end it has been very satisfying to drop the occasional: “I host my own email BTW”

    Good luck! Let us know how you get along!


  • I’m trying to do a 3-2-1 but instead I’m doing a 4-3-0. Original is on SSD with scheduled backups to two separate HDs so that I have 3 copies on two different media (if SSD + HD counts as distinct enough) so then I added in BDR as an infrequent 4th manual copy for my most irreplaceable data (and I’m very strict with what counts as irreplaceable so that the total is just over 100GB at this point). Eventually I need to get a copy of the disks off site but for now they are in the basement.

    I have no illusions about how long the BDRs will last. (Seems like it is anywhere between 100 days and 100 years).My aim is to just have another copy that is distinct from magnetic or flash storage. My plan is to burn new updated copies so that any data on an old disk will get burned to a newer disk at some point. Maybe in ten years I’ll abandon this approach but for now it makes me feel better.