Email no longer being received and logins are suuuuuuuper slow.

I'm replying to my own email. This serves no purpose. Just like my server at the moment. I feel strangely at one with the desperate ennui of my situation. This is a cry for help.

Thunderbird isn't actually connecting to my email server (it's just Postfix/the other program I can't even be bothered to remember the name of right now). Dovecot. Whatever. God.

Dovecot was the name of a clandestine military operation way back when. Or something.

Go on. Please help. Suggest something. Anything. I'll delete my favourite picture of my cat if you help me.

You need to give us some more info… what OS you are running for one thing. Also what error messages you are getting, how you are trying to connect, etc.

I don't know about the mail issue. (I believe that people who run their own mail server need to have a ton of Linux sysop experience before they embark down that rabbit hole!)

As for the slow logins, there are a zillion reasons for that. For one thing, are you connecting to your router via wi-fi or a direct connection?

Is there an issue when logging in via LISH?

I suggest you open a support ticket.

Dovecot was the name of a clandestine military operation way back when. Or something.

A dovecot (or dovecote) is (typically) an above-structure used for housing/breeding domestic doves or pigeons -- an important food source in Middle Age Europe. Carrier pigeons were used extensively in WWI…hence the military connotation. Obviously, the advent of wireless communication eliminated the need for carrier pigeons.

postfix is an email server. dovecot is a mail delivery server. They communicate using LMTP (local-mail transfer protocol) over (usually) a Unix-domain socket. You can use postfix without dovecot but you'll only get maildir-/mbox-style delivery & storage. dovecot can handle many different kinds of delivery (& do customizable storage) -- maildir, mbox, pop3, imap, etc.

Thunderbird isn't actually connecting to my email server

TBird can only connect to postfix to send mail. You need dovecot so that TBird can connect to retrieve mail efficiently using pop3 or imap. postfix only knows how to store mail in maildir & mbox formats. It's not very good at retrieving email for an MUA (mail user agent -- TBird in one of your posts).

I'm going to have to concur with @acanton77 here, you haven't provided enough information to even give you a place to start looking for whatever it is that's ailing you.

You might give this a look-see: https://mailinabox.email . It could be the answer to your problems. Running an email server is not for beginners or the faint of heart. Once you get it set up, there's all kinds of other stuff you need to comply with to be a good email citizen (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, ARC, etc). Slip up on any of that once and the big boys (Comcast, M$, Gmail, etc) will banish your messages to the seventh circle of hell post haste (and rehabilitation is at their mercy). Trust me on this…

-- sw