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I have an extra desktop at my house that I want to turn into a email server with postfix and dovecot. I did set it up and can send internal emails on my subnet, 192.168.2.0/24. I configured the postfix configs as well.

The problem was when I tried to connect to the telnet socket and send an email to an exterior domain and it wouldn't let me forward the email outgoing. I linked my domain name to my router and then port forwarded port 25 on my router and then internally linked port 25 to the desktop computer.

Just wondering is there anything else I would have to configure or setup, is this a good stack am I missing any tool or software to get the email server going I didnt think it would be that hard just set up the server and what not.

Appreciate any advice

meanthatmuchtoyou
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1 Answers1

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A lot of Internet providers will block you from being able to use port 25.

one way to go is to rent an online server to pass through the traffic to your home mail server.

So you setup a vps with someone like Digital Ocean, then you can create a tunnel between your home computer and the online VPS and pass on the mail through the encrypted tunnel to your home server, (the encrypted tunnel wouldn't even need a port forwarded on your firewall..

A good beginner way to do the tunnel could be Zerotier or Tailscale.

Level1tech forums has a few guides talking about this.
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/email-server/125752/4

Mikesco3
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  • Thanks Mike that was what I was worried about is ISP blocking they should not be able to do that the whole point was to avoid the cloud as well. I use tailscale but I will look at using them as a tunnel or ways to send out on port 25. – meanthatmuchtoyou Nov 14 '22 at 15:23
  • Well, this is going to sound silly, but you can't avoid the cloud when dealing with email (as email travels through the cloud) but in the example, you're not storing your email on the cloud, you are still storing the email on your equipment, the only thing the cloud is doing is routing traffic, which the cloud already does anyways... – Mikesco3 Nov 14 '22 at 15:36
  • Thank you for accepting my previous answer by the way... – Mikesco3 Nov 14 '22 at 15:37
  • no problem, yea I know what you mean I just feel there has to be a way to setup an email server at home with your internet connection and your own hardware. – meanthatmuchtoyou Nov 14 '22 at 15:43
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    There is, however another issue to consider is that, also does every spammer out there. So there are some tech features that have been implemented to try to mitigate some of that. if you do setup your own server, don't forget to consider DKIM, SPF and DMARC, this is in order for: A every other mail server out there sending your messages to spam, and B nobody else spoofing your mail server. – Mikesco3 Nov 14 '22 at 16:39
  • That does make sense in the case of spamming, thank you I will look at configuring those protocols – meanthatmuchtoyou Nov 14 '22 at 17:11
  • @meanthatmuchtoyou the whole point of the blocks is to limit/gatekeeper the ease of setting up “popup” mail servers to limit exposure to heavy spam floods. So your use case is a high risk thing for an isp. – James Risner Nov 14 '22 at 19:32
  • yea realizing that now i guess i was being naive – meanthatmuchtoyou Nov 15 '22 at 18:08