Anyone running production mail server on Linode
Hello,
I am in the need of migrating a very old mail server from our Hurricane Electric co-location facility to Linode (also in Fremont!).
Old mail server is on Fedora/redhat and uses Dovecot/Postfix as the MDA/MTA combo. The clients use IMAP/POP and webmail (Roundcube).
The files in /var/spool/mail which are in the old format (mbox?) needs to be migrated.
Going through the build process now. Anyway, are you using a production mail server on a Linode IP address? What is your experience?
My biggest fear is that the old mail server has been spam-free and whitelisted for many services and now I am about to switch to a Linode IP for the mail server! Linode IPs can have good/bad reputation based on what I end up getting for it.
Anyone delt with issues related to IP reputation with Linode based mail servers?
Just trying to get some ideas together on what kind of issues might hit me when I launch.
Thanks
2 Replies
I have been running a production mail server for years. Google and Yahoo were problematic but since I have implemented SPF, DKIM and DMARC, it has been smooth sailing. Here is what I would recommend:
- Check to see if you are on any blacklists
- Reserve an IP just for your mail server. Bind the mail server to this IP and nothing else.
- Make sure you have reverse DNS set up for this within your Linode manager
- Set up SPF and DKIM
- After those are working well and you have verified this (make sure you verify), configure DMARC to send you reports. These are very useful in helping to narrow down any issue that could be causing your mail to be rejected. I found, for example, that mail was sent from both interfaces and I needed to change my Postfix configuration.
- Of course, keep your server from becoming an open relay
That should do it. With the above policies there should be no reason why your mail is rejected. The typical business doesn't even get this right, so if you do then it should be pretty clean.
watrick
Linode Staff
What @techgeek_us posted is very good. To add to that, I'd like to provide some tools to help you through those items on their list:
Check to see if you are on any blacklists
A good tool for checking RBLs is http://multirbl.valli.org/, which checks multiple RBLs at once.
Reserve an IP just for your mail server. Bind the mail server to this IP and nothing else.
This would best be done by having a separate Linode for your mailserver, and having it serve no other purpose.
Make sure you have reverse DNS set up for this within your Linode manager
We have a guide for this: Configure Your Linode for Reverse DNS (rDNS)
More information about PTR records can be found here: DNS Records: An Introduction – PTR
Set up SPF and DKIM
Both of these TXT records can be created through DNS Manager
For more info on each: