I'm looking for a guide to build a FreeBSD mail server. Googling results in literally hundreds of Linux-based tutorials and articles, with just a handful of FreeBSD entries in the field, with most of them being very old, basing the approach on 6.x or 8.x. And every single "mail-in-a-box" type setups are Linux-only exclusively. There's iRedMail of course but that requires you to buy the commercial version to be really useful.
What I'm looking for is a modern guide that takes effective anti-spam measures, SPF, DMARC and DKIM into consideration along with a SpamAssassin alternative, (if possible) doesn't require to run a SQL setup and does not rely on some crappy PHP or Python web config panel. Most use cases I'm looking to use this setup for involve just a couple dozen users and me as the sole administrator.
I thought that should be easy to do when looking through various guides and tutorials. What I didn't count on was that every single guide does things differently and often without explaining why. This makes a complex setup like a mail server very hard to understand. I haven't been able to find reliable, moderately easy to follow information about how to pull this off — ideally, a guide that is more focused on the tools than the OS. Packages I can install myself and figure out what may be missing. What I cannot figure out is how to configure and wire up the different components needed for a mail server reliably.
I have years of system administration experience with UNIX system but email has always been a point of major frustration for me. When you try to dive into the inner workings and configuration of open source components like Postfix, Dovecot and its plumbing, getting a reliable and modern setup out of it is a bit akin to dabbling with dark arts. The difficulty, I believe, is in the dozens of possible combinations of MTAs, MDAs and other tools.
My preferred setup is a rather basic one: Postfix, Dovecot, a DMARC tool, some Anti-Spam tools, everything in plain text config files (including users), ability to forward and copy mails, aliases, server-side mail filters. Virtual users and multiple domains would be nice to have but not completely necessary.
Thank you for any and all pointers.
What I'm looking for is a modern guide that takes effective anti-spam measures, SPF, DMARC and DKIM into consideration along with a SpamAssassin alternative, (if possible) doesn't require to run a SQL setup and does not rely on some crappy PHP or Python web config panel. Most use cases I'm looking to use this setup for involve just a couple dozen users and me as the sole administrator.
I thought that should be easy to do when looking through various guides and tutorials. What I didn't count on was that every single guide does things differently and often without explaining why. This makes a complex setup like a mail server very hard to understand. I haven't been able to find reliable, moderately easy to follow information about how to pull this off — ideally, a guide that is more focused on the tools than the OS. Packages I can install myself and figure out what may be missing. What I cannot figure out is how to configure and wire up the different components needed for a mail server reliably.
I have years of system administration experience with UNIX system but email has always been a point of major frustration for me. When you try to dive into the inner workings and configuration of open source components like Postfix, Dovecot and its plumbing, getting a reliable and modern setup out of it is a bit akin to dabbling with dark arts. The difficulty, I believe, is in the dozens of possible combinations of MTAs, MDAs and other tools.
My preferred setup is a rather basic one: Postfix, Dovecot, a DMARC tool, some Anti-Spam tools, everything in plain text config files (including users), ability to forward and copy mails, aliases, server-side mail filters. Virtual users and multiple domains would be nice to have but not completely necessary.
Thank you for any and all pointers.