How difficult is it to setup a mailserver?

Posted by Jacob R on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Jacob R
Published on 2010-03-23T18:22:00Z Indexed on 2010/03/23 18:23 UTC
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Filed under:

linux

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emailserver

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security

I want a secure mail solution, as I am looking to move away from Google and other parties looking into my private data.

How much of a PITA is it to setup my own mailserver? Should I go for an external provider with a good privacy policy and encrypted data instead?

I have a VPS running Debian (with a dedicated IP + reverse DNS), and I'm a fairly capable Linux administrator, having setup a couple of webservers, home networks, and looking over the shoulder of sysadmins at work.

The security I currently have on the VPS is limited to iptables and installing/running the bare minimum of what I need (currently basically irssi and lighttpd).

When setting up a mail server, is there a lot of stuff to take into consideration? Will my outgoing mail be marked as spam on other servers if I don't implement a number of solutions? Will reliable spam filtering be difficult to setup? Can I easily encrypt the stored mail?

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