September 2017 - luv-main

Sending Bulk Mail - Own SMTP mail server on VPS vs 3rd Party Mail Service
by Wen Lin 01 Oct '17

01 Oct '17

One of the associations I'm in (besides LUV) have been experiencing difficulties sending bulk emails to members on a monthly basis (for announcements, newsletters purposes). This is because when you are trying to send bulk emails via your free web mail account (in this case, GMail), there is a limit imposed by Google (or any other webmail service providers) on the number of email addresses we can mail out to, within a period of time - and this limit can get ever stricter as time goes by. So the whole mailout process becomes unmanageable after a while. While the Ctte is looking into various alternatives, including several of the 3rd party mail services / transactional mail services in the market, I am offering them another option: Setup a SMTP mail server (e.g. Postfix) on a VPS hosted by a web hosting company, and handle the whole bulk mailout ourselves. I am willing to help them setting up a VPS, hardening the Linux, installing & configuring all the mail software, etc, and then take care of the regular maintenance. For VPS hosting service - I had looked at one hostwinds.com (Editor's Choice of au.pcmag.com 2017) (~ US$ 14 / mth). Will check out others to compare - basically I'm after a reasonably priced and reputable VPS web hosting company. I would like to hear any recommendation, or any first-hand experience dealing with any particular web hosting company - which I'm sure many of LUV members certainly have. For domain name (.org.au) - About $48 for 2 years. Any reputable Domain Registrar that you would recommend? For SSL Certificate - I can install one from Let's Encrypt, which will be free. Any major cost/charges that I have missed? I also intend to follow all the bulk mail best practices, SPF/DKIM settings, MX records, security measures, email etiquette, etc, to make sure that our organisation normal notification/newsletter to our members, would not be treated as SPAM. The 3rd party mail service providers that I had found so far: MailChimp, MailJet, Amazon-SES, SendGrid, MailGun (and many others). Did lots of google searches, trying to compare (Advantages & Disadvantages) between managing own SMTP mail server and using 3rd party mail services. The results were mix and varied. I myself certainly have much more faith in opting for a self-managed mail server solution over the commercial mail service ones. Some of the advantages: - Have full control over most aspect of the mailing process. More flexible. Not constraint by the ever-changing rules imposed by 3rd party mail services. - Using all free & open source software - have all the freedom, and can tap into the large FOSS Community out there for various kinds of help and support. - Cost-wise, the mail server option is generally on the lower end of the price spectrum, as compared to many of the 3rd party mail services in the market. - No doubt the own mail server option would involve more work, more time to manage the whole thing - but I'm quite happy to take up this challenge, and to learn a lot from this hands-on experience. I would be delighted if any of you who are experienced in managing a linux-based mail server can kindly share with us some more real-life examples and hands-on experiences - so that I can gather more solid evidence & cases, hopefully to strengthen my case for a self-managed mail server solution. Some points that I had read somewhere that I would like to quote below to seek your comment: "*What a commercial mailing list operator does, and which you cannot easily replicate, is build and maintain a reputation as a responsible and reputable source of bulk email. If you are not going to be getting into that, perhaps you could benefit from getting help from a commercial mailer. ... * *Abuse handling, bounce handling etc are important to get right, but until you have significant experience, your reputation is going to remain zero, if not negative (which is a reasonable starting point for unknown domains in this day and age). A lot of the reputation-based stuff like SPF, DKIM etc will help only if you have a reputation to defend. On the other hand, it does send the right signals to somebody who is deciding on whether or not a sender is to be treated as reputable (or rather, their absence is not a good sign; neither, in my book, is anything to suggest you are using homegrown and/or prerelease software to send email). *..." I also read somewhere which seemed to point to a 3rd option: Still use own mail server, but direct the outbound mails to an external Mail Relay service. What do you think? When this whole project (if accepted by my Ctte) is done and implemented successfully, I intend to share my experience in this whole process, in one of LUV talks. In the mean time, I have a lot of work to do, and lots to learn ... Cheers, Wen

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Re: **SPF problems detected ** Re: Sending Bulk Mail - Own SMTP mail server on VPS vs 3rd Party Mail Service
by Andrew McGlashan 24 Sep '17

24 Sep '17

Recieved-SPF: permerror (darrenwurf.com: Unknown mechanism type 'aaaa' in 'v=spf1' record) receiver=luv.asn.au; identity=mailfrom; envelope-from="darren(a)darrenwurf.com"; helo=mail.darrenwurf.com; client-ip=43.229.63.47 https://vamsoft.com/support/tools/spf-policy-tester 46.4.124.163 darren(a)darrenwurf.com PARAMETERS DNS server: 8.8.8.8 (Google Public DNS) Evaluation time limit: 20 seconds (default, see RFC7208 Section 4.6.4) Maximum number of void DNS lookups: 2 (default, see RFC7208 Section 4.6.4) Standards compliance: RFC7208 (April 2014) Test is queued, please wait... +0 msSPF check starting. IP: 46.4.124.163 Sender: darren(a)darrenwurf.com Domain: darrenwurf.com EHLO/HELO domain: +0 msRetrieving DNS TXT record for "darrenwurf.com". +37 msTXT record found. Line #1: "v=spf1 mx mx:darrenwurf.com mx:secure.darrenwurf.com mx:smtp.darrenwurf.com a:darrenwurf.com a:docker4.darrenwurf.com aaaa:darrenwurf.com -all" +0 msStarting SPF policy evaluation. Policy: "v=spf1 mx mx:darrenwurf.com mx:secure.darrenwurf.com mx:smtp.darrenwurf.com a:darrenwurf.com a:docker4.darrenwurf.com aaaa:darrenwurf.com -all" +1 msSyntax error in the SPF policy. Returning SPF "permerror". Domain: darrenwurf.com At character: 119 Length: 19 Token: "aaaa:darrenwurf.com" Error: Unknown term "aaaa". +0 msFinished SPF policy evaluation. DNS limits status: DNS terms 0 of 10 allowed. Void lookups 0 of 2 allowed. See RFC7208 Section 4.6.4. +0 msThere was an error during the policy evaluation. Error message: "Syntax error in SPF policy for "darrenwurf.com" at character 119: Unknown term "aaaa"." +0 msPolicy evaluation finished with SPF "permerror". TEST SUMMARY The evaluation completed in 38 ms, with 2 errors and 0 warning. Result: SPF permerror Permanent error. Fixing the problem requires intervention of the policy publisher. Error message: "Syntax error in SPF policy for "darrenwurf.com" at character 119: Unknown term "aaaa"."

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Re: Sending Bulk Mail - Own SMTP mail server on VPS vs 3rd Party Mail Service
by Wen Lin 23 Sep '17

23 Sep '17

Hi Arjen, Thanks for your info. I will check out this Binary Lane. BTW, I noticed a few of our LUV members have VPS hosted by Digital Ocean. They seem quite active in hosting various Linux related forums and tutorials. However, Digital Ocean is also American, but they do have DCs outside of US, e.g. Canada. Cheers, Wen On 23 Sep. 2017 5:00 pm, "Arjen Lentz" <arjen(a)lentz.com.au> wrote: Hi For our VPS hosting needs in Australia we use Binary Lane. They're Australian owned as well, which I regard as an advantage (also in legal terms). Stuff just works and their support has been very prompt and technically competent. Linode is very good and we've used them for years, but they are American and thus directly subject to US legal leverage. Even if you used a Linode DC in Japan or Singapore, ultimately it would be open to US legal frivolities. This may not be a consideration for some needs, but I'm just putting it out there. Data sovereignty is a thing. Regards, Arjen.

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test message
by zlinw＠mcmedia.com.au 12 Sep '17

12 Sep '17

Test message to see if I can finally post to luv from my luv registered email adress Lindsay

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Re: device naming (was Re: Ethernet port setup part2)
by Erik Christiansen 08 Sep '17

08 Sep '17

On 08.09.17 22:22, Craig Sanders via luv-main wrote: > except that udev will **always* run before any NIC is up, while ifrename > may not - and will bail if the NIC is in use. which, IIRC, provided the > motivation for me to finally switch from ifrename to udev years after > udev had the capability. Whatever works best in the use case, of course, but from "man ifrename": "Ifrename must be run before interfaces are brought up, which is why it's mostly useful in various scripts (init, hotplug) but is seldom used directly by the user." Sounds like mdev will be worth a look once it matures a bit. (Will have to try to remember.) Erik

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Re: device naming (was Re: Ethernet port setup part2)
by Russell Coker 08 Sep '17

08 Sep '17

On Thursday, 7 September 2017 11:02:52 PM AEST Rick Moen via luv-main wrote: > I would never recommend for a business as file server with simultaneous > use of motherboard SATA ports, a PCI-E SAS card, and USB things on an > ongoing basis. That seems like poor component selection, IMVAO. [0] Sometimes you just have to do such things. I run a server which has as it's main purpose preparing SD card images for embedded PCs. The images are made by the people who install the embedded PCs on-site (who wear high-visibility clothing). Getting them to unplug USB devices during system boot isn't a viable option. I just have to make the system work with a SD card being sda and hard drives being sde and sdf if it boots with the USB device connected. As for Ethernet device names, here are the device names I chose for one of my systems: ethbl ethbr gethm getht lo mb0 The sockets on PCI boards are bottom-left, bottom-right, middle (gig-e), and top (gig-e). The motherboard has a single socket. Udev naming worked for me and didn't need any special configuration. Now I use files in /etc/systemd/ network and again it works without any special configuration. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Re: Ethernet port setup part2
by Rick Moen 08 Sep '17

08 Sep '17

I just remembered: > I vaguely recall that a system swapped eth0 and eth1 when replacing a > 2.0.x kernel with a 2.2.x kernel (or 2.4 to 2.6, or something like > that). Which didn't surprise me much, and is why God made rc files > editable. > > And ifrename is cool. I've encountered _zero_ instances of network interfaces changing their device nodes on RHEL/CentOS, under any circumstances, for the simple reason of DEVICE and HWADDR directives being used in the default /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-* files. DEVICE=eth0 HWADDR=11:22:33:44:55:66 Which can optionally be used to assign devices names of your choosing such as 'lan' and 'wan'. I guess the 'network interfaces have come up in a different order' scenario seems to be primarily a Debian/*buntu, etc. one (that has never arisen in my use-cases), and mostly involves USB (and other equally flaky hotplug hardware schemes). Did I mention that ifrename is cool? ;->

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Ethernet port setup part2
by zlinew9＠virginbroadband.com.au 07 Sep '17

07 Sep '17

Success.... At last! I was getting no where on Debian 8, glancing at Debian 9 spec, it said it had support for G4 modems, so I install debian 9, with network mangager..............still no joy .........ssssssiiiiggghhhhhh. Anyway this morning I was ready for a challaenge so I decided to have another go. I ran the command "nmcli connection show" to see what was happening and was stunned to find the following report........... ---------------------------------------------------------------- enx0c5b8f279a64: connected to Wired connection 3 "HUAWEI MOBILE" ethernet (rndis_host), 0C:5B:8F:27:9A:64, hw, mtu 1500 ip4 default inet4 192.168.8.100/24 inet6 fe80::4636:a274:6574:96fa/64 enp5s0: unavailable "Marvell 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Motherboard)" ethernet (sky2), 20:CF:30:7E:C3:09, hw, mtu 1500 lo: unmanaged loopback (unknown), 00:00:00:00:00:00, sw, mtu 65536 DNS configuration: servers: 192.168.8.1 interface: enx0c5b8f279a64 servers: 192.168.254.1 domains: mydomain.example interface: enp6s0 --------------------------------------------------------- Its enx0c5b8f279a64 that I am looking for, it now works OK, interestingly connection time is slower than with windows but transfer rates appear to be good. Why I did not do this before, god knows............ God its great to getaway from bl...y awfull windows................. Now all (ALL!!!) I have to do is to reconfig my fire wall on to this box and my small network is back on the air. Lindsay

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server crash
by Russell Coker 04 Sep '17

04 Sep '17

The luv server was down this morning because of a KVM error. Also another KVM VM on the same system crashed. Sorry for sleeping in. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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FOSS hack days
by Russell Coker 01 Sep '17

01 Sep '17

There are meetups for hacking open-data type projects held in the CBD. They are quite ok and hacking any open software is acceptable (some people edit Wikipedia and I have done some Debian development there). But they aren't specific to Linux and similar development. I have access to a very comfortable office in the CBD with free tea, coffee, hot chocolate, and wifi and I can invite friends for meetings. I can't issue an open invitation, but probably everyone who would be interested in attending such meetings is a friend anyway. ;) Who would be interested in attending such a meeting to work on Debian and similar projects? People who want to test software, file bug reports, work on documentation, etc are welcome. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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