Well, I’ve finally done it. Last night I made the final DNS changes and I’m up and running with my very own linode. It took some time to decide on which mail servers to use and then get everything configured correctly, but it was most definitely worth it.
Hosting is costing me $20.00 a month for a full virtual colocated server running my linux distribution of choice (Ubuntu) and easy access to all of the tools that I need to manage it. I’m paying $20.00 a year for a DNS solution from DynDNS. Linode.com could do it all for me, but I have a server at my house that needs dynamic DNS updates and DynDNS was the best option for me.
So, for anyone curious, I’m running Apache2 with PHP5 and MySQL plus Apache Tomcat for Java support. On the mail side of things, I’ve got Postfix handling my SMTP needs and Dovecot serving up IMAP (POP will soon be disabled). I’m running Postgrey for spam controls which, coupled with slightly paranoid settings in Postfix, is keeping spam level at a very good level. Definitely not as low as when I was using boxtrapper, but for an automatic solution that is less vulnerable to exploits I can hardly complain. I will, however, be looking into some active blacklists soon as well. I have RoundCube installed for web access to my emails and of course WordPress which you’re reading from right now.
Please bear with me on the default WordPress theme for the time being. I’ve got some ideas for a new design, but I haven’t had the time to implement them. I’ll be working on it as soon as I’m finished with a few more pressing projects.
