xposted with lucid.observer

I decided to go back to raspbian as 
my base distro. The learning curve
of BSD + raspberry pi + mail server
wasn't the most interesting to explore. 

I though I'd start with raspi as I know
more what is going on, and setup a base
system, that could be re-created later
on a different system as needed. 

As I learn about email server, I find
the archlinux wiki[1] to be the most 
instructive. 

There is the MTA or mail transfer agent
(exim, dma, postfix) and the MDA which
is the mail delivery agent (dovecot, cyrus.)
Most tutorials for mail servers focus on using 
2 different tools for the job, like
postfix and dovecot, while other
tutorials gets you to install a full
fledge system like Citadel[2].
But a quick look at the table of
mail server tools on the archwiki
I see that courier[3] covers the 
MTA and the MDA role without being 
overly heavy. 

Discussing the mail server on SDF COM
with Thirg[4] I see that the will be 
the smtp will be the most difficult 
aspect to secure, so I'll do the testing 
only on the internal network and then open 
the port on my router to monitor 
how it will be abused. I feel that using 
the raspberry pi server for monitoring 
and blocking unwanted traffic on the
smtp port will be ressource intensive
so I have to come up with a creative
way to keep it simple and secure. 
Thrig had some solution on his
gemini capsule, I'll see what else
can be done. 

As I am exploring the communication 
server possibility, I'm still attached to 
the idea to run an email server, 
accesible from ssh (mutt or pine),
and from imap or pop3, while keeping
the email only on the server. There
are so many other ways to communicate
these day, but stil feeling the email 
will be the easiest onboarding 
tool. 

1 https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mail_server
2 https://www.citadel.org/
3 https://www.courier-mta.org/
4 gemini://thrig.me/blog/2023/10/19/local-smtp-server.gmi