How do I setup my Linode to receive email addressed to anyone @mydomain?
How exactly do I configure my linode to receive email?
I own my own domain and would like to use it to receive email, I'm not that interested in sending email just receiving it.
Thanks
3 Replies
@aleksd2000 --
You need an email server… Although there are lots of choices out there, the easiest to setup are postfix(1) & dovecot(1) (personal bias here). If you want to only receive mail, you'll have to configure postfix(1) appropriately. Linode has guides for setting these up:
https://www.linode.com/docs/search/?q=email+server
Whether you send mail or not, you are still going to need spam defenses, virus protection, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, etc. as well. None of that is very hard to set up but it's tedious…very tedious…and a lot of it is not very well-documented.
As the operator of a low-volume mail server, I can testify from my own experience that an email server takes a lot of care & feeding. You'll want to consider your decision very carefully…you're looking at a lot of lost weekends here…and a lot of bitching & moaning from your customers that your installation doesn’t have every bell & whistle of or work exactly like Gmail or Outlook 365.
-- sw
Hi @sw, thanks for the reply! The server is actually for me. It's not for production use. I wanted to see if I could do it and bought a domain name just for that.
I've gone through a guide which the guys at linode sent me, I've gone through it to the letter and still can't get it to work.
I really don't want to go back to using google for email.
If your bored, wanna fix it? :)
Aleks.
PS: Linode sent this:
If you are more interested in running a mail server in Debian, we have another guide that goes through the the installation Postfix in Debian, although admittedly it's a bit more involved when compared to Mail-in-a-Box:
Email with Postfix, Dovecot, and MySQL : https://www.linode.com/docs/email/postfix/email-with-postfix-dovecot-and-mysql/
You write:
I really don't want to go back to using google for email.
Seems as if you've reached that proverbial place where you have to choose between a rock and a hard place…
You also write:
If your bored, wanna fix it? :)
No thanks… I like having weekends off.
If you don't need MySQL for anything else and you only have a few accounts, consider using SQLite for the database:
http://www.postfix.org/SQLITE_README.html
SQLite is really simple and much easier to set up and administer.
-- sw