User:Paul/sandbox/Mail-in-a-Box
The Mail-in-a-Box (MiaB) project provides an automatically configured mail server using popular, mature, and secure software. It uses python and BASH scripting to automatically configure its own DNS server, mail server, web server, webmail software, plus its own PHP admin interface. The installation process is moderately difficult for those not familiar with the command line or mail servers.
These tutorials are currently written to assume basic command line knowledge and familiarity with remote SSH sessions.
It is important to note that the MiaB project assumes that the server is being configured on a VPS that is directly on the World Wide Web through a publicly accessible IP address.
The MiaB project setup page is written assuming using Gandi as a domain registrar and Digital Ocean as a VPS provider. However, this is not required to run MiaB and the below articles do not use these services.
Install MiaB using Namecheap and Vultr
Namecheap is a U.S.-based registrar located in Arizona that consistently earns top marks for privacy and defense of their customers and they offer a rich set of features free of charge with every domain.
Vultr is a VPS provider that offers inexpensive and reliable basic server hosting with all of the features MiaB requires.
Install Mail-in-a-Box to local server on residential ISP
MiaB can be installed to a local server as long as it is configured correctly and the network gateway either through stateful routing or placing the server in a DMZ. It will be necessary to understand more advanced configurations of the network gateway, or switch to a network gateway that is easier to find configurations for, such as one that runs OpenWRT or use hardware that supports pfSense or OPNsense.
The drawbacks come in several ways. Verify the public IP address is static, can have a PTR record (set by ISP at customer's request), and is not blacklisted.
It is also required to configure a UPS as Linux and other *nix operating systems tend to handle instant poweroff very poorly. Note this article is still incomplete and does not yet cover using an old laptop with its batter as the UPS and disabling auto-standby when closing the lid.