[kwlug disc.] Home e-mail server vs. freeshell.org?

[Daniel Agar]

> Some time ago, I ruminated over creating my own home e-mail server
> host, to become ISP independent. Gmail, Yahoo, myrealbox, etc., are
> what they are, and that isn't enough. I want to create/delete e-mail
> accounts 'on the fly'. Preferably, to my own domain.
>
> In response, John kindly noted the things to look at are
> (approximately, YMMV, and different people prefer different pieces)
> MailScanner, ClamAV and Spamassassin, let alone sendmail and
> squirrelmail, procmail, and onwards.
>
> Having seen Paul's use of sdf.lonestar.org, and poking away at it
> myself, it has occurred to me this may be a better way for me, an
> individual, to go. [Small businesses too, for that matter.] US$36
> once, + US$20 annual, doesn't seem onerous. Especially at par.
>
> The advantage being I can't snooker myself by shooting myself in the
> foot somehow, and being down, or lost, for an indeterminate period of
> time. If I knife or kill a myth box, that's inconvenient and
> irritating. If I kill my e-mail, it's rather more than that.
>
> Anyone have any downsides to doing this on freeshell? e.g.
> Performance, Speed? Paul?
>
> Are there other freeshell like facilities out there that would host my
> own mail domain?
>
> Or other ideas? e.g. Richard, you seem happy with how you're set up /
> externally hosted. Who are you using?
>
> Comments, suggestions?
>
> Thanks.
>
> -- Bill

I've been running my own mail server for years on debian with postfix as
the MTA. You could probably do it with any connection and dyndns, but I
went with a dsl provider that gave me a static ip and registered my own
domain. Actually now that I think about it, I believe the big ISPs (rogers
and sympatico) block SMTP traffic.
I funnel all of my other email accounts to this server mostly with
fetchmail. I usually access my mail through squirrelmail, which is a nice
php webmail client I run on apache, but I also use pine sometimes. I like
to keep everything server side.

I'm not really sure exactly what your looking for, but another alternative
might be google apps (http://www.google.com/a/org/). Basically gives you
the gmail interface for your domain hosted by google, and allows you to
control the accounts. They don't host the domain for you though.