Hello Andr?,
thanks for the explanations, appreciated, and for sure publishing a comparison
would help users to make a decision, where to "shop", and maybe also
for enthusiast the opportunity to join forces on specific topics.
I like that you support FDE, but my personal preference is to run *x as virtual
machines on Hyper-V with Bitlocker and Bitlocker Network Unlock. I haven?t
looked into Clevis & Tang yet in detail, which might be an alternative.
I decided for mailcow early 2018 where it met my requirements, but I am also
open to alternatives, especially if they are on par or close w.r.t.
functionality, ideally offering high availability via two replicating instances
(mailcow does this commercially only and didn?t offer a GDPR compliant
contract).
Thanks,
Joachim
-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Andr? Rodier <andre at rodier.me>
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 29. Dezember 2022 08:44
An: dovecot at dovecot.org; Joachim Lindenberg <dovecot at lindenberg.one>
Betreff: Re: Self hosting solution for Christmas
On 27 December 2022 11:39:42 CET, Joachim Lindenberg <dovecot at
lindenberg.one> wrote:>I have to support Marc?s question. And also - what makes HomeBox different
from Mailcow (https://mailcow.email/)?
>Thanks, Joachim
>
>-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
>Von: dovecot <dovecot-bounces at dovecot.org> Im Auftrag von Marc
>Gesendet: Dienstag, 27. Dezember 2022 11:25
>An: Andre Rodier <andre at rodier.me>; dovecot at dovecot.org;
>postfix-users at postfix.org; debian-user at lists.debian.org;
>users-request at sogo.nu
>Betreff: RE: Self hosting solution for Christmas
>
>>
>> Here my present for Christmas: a new version of HomeBox, the self
>> hosted email solution.
>>
>> Feel free to drop comments, create issues, update the docs, etc.
>>
>> I released this quickly before going on vacation, so you may find
>> some issues. However, this is mostly stable, and the code is easy to
modify.
>>
>
>That is why one should not be interested to much risk of lacking future
support. What if your wife gets pregnant and there is no update/release for 9
months? ;) Obviously I admire such open source efforts.
>It is just such a pity to see so many projects initiated seemingly without
first trying to bundle forces. This is especially visible in crm all these
individual projects are 'shitty', I do not get why none of them try and
work together to create a few good ones.
>
>I used to always state that there is only one real distribution you could
use, and that is the centos one. Basically because you could always buy a redhat
license and get the support of a billion dollar company (now even IBM), but with
their stream direction this all becomes questionable. However most projects do
not even have an argument other than 'this is the distribution I know'.
>
>The only long term alternative I see, is using containers that hardly have
any os dependency and behave more like micro services. So you focus on the
direct updates of suppliers.
>
>
>
>
Hello, Joachim.
Perhaps I need to rewrite the doc, and the readme, so I will clarify a few
points.
Homebox is a set of Ansible scripts to install and configure an email stack on
Debian. Exactly like you would do it manually, but in an automated way.
Once the play book has been run, you still have a Debian installed, without any
custom binary.
Therefore, of you need any support, ask the relevant making lists, like postfix,
dovecot, sogo, Debian, clamav, rspamd, etc...
Now, to answer your question, I had a look to mailcow, and I still prefer
Homebox to hosts my emails.
The security of my primary concern. If you look the code carefully, you will see
a lot of decisions in this direction. From the list of authorised ciphers and
the enforced encryption, even internally, to the absence of PHP. Also, the
non-free and contrib sections are excluded.
I also offers full disk encryption out of the box using Debian preseed with
remote drive unlocking.
You will also see a lot of unit tests to ensure the whole stack is running as
expected.
Finally, I trust a lot the Debian community security policies. I prefer to use
them than another community, especially with the unattended-upgrades package.
In terms of features, again, we're definitely not on the same line.
Homebox does not support multiple domains, and will never.
However, I use an LDAP server for authentication, which is used for other
services, like a Jabber server. The solution includes a Jabber server out of the
box, with files upload and server to server communication.
Next year, I will start to include a Prometheus stack, with alerts sent by xmpp.
I am also planning to add more features i think can be useful to personal
hosting, still using Debian repositories. For instance, a WebDAV server to share
files across multiple devices.
I don't pretend creating a better solution than X or Y, and I may add
mailcow in the list of other solutions. However, I think some people, like me,
just want to deploy a mail / xmpp server on Debian without third party packages.
This is why I created this project.
Kind regards,
Andr?.
PS : for Marc's knowledge, I am very happy with the kids I already have. I
had a surgery to ensure I won't have more. Maybe an example to follow...