The list is immense, and I didn’t want to clutter my post with all the details. So just listing off things that spring to mind (because I don’t know what OP doesn’t know):
Choosing an MTA - sendmail, postfix, exim, etc. and why you might choose one over the others
Firewall settings
Software/package management on your chosen distro
Learning about DNS:
Host it - yourself via BIND
Or via a DNS service provider
DNS record types
Domains
Subdomains
A records/CNAMEs
MX records
Mail authority records - SPF’s
Mail encryption records - DKIM
Spam filtering, anti-virus
Learning how to configure your MTA, which requires learning:
the configuration file language your MTA uses
what all the options mean and what they do
what the bare minimum options are to get up and running
how to make sure your configuration is secure and won’t be exploitable by bad actors
how mail really gets delivered
how to setup secure smtp
how to set up SPFs
troubleshooting why GMAIL or Microsoft won’t accept your mail
troubleshooting why GMAIL or Microsoft have stopped accepting your mail
dealing with blacklists/greylists when someone sends too many messages, or something that "looks too spammy"
Mail hosting pitfalls
Being an open relay
Rate limiting
Reputation management
Vulnerabilities that let a hacker take over your server
Resource management - disk, memory, processes, queues, etc.
Downtime when you need to do updates
Downtime if you change your DNS configuration
I’ve definitely missed some stuff, and each of those things requires knowing other stuff too, so you can see that it’s really a pretty deep subject. This is precisely why not many people self-host email themselves these days - the big guys have made it harder and harder to do so, in the name of eradicating spam, which they themselves are the biggest vectors for.
cybervegan@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
The list is immense, and I didn’t want to clutter my post with all the details. So just listing off things that spring to mind (because I don’t know what OP doesn’t know):
I’ve definitely missed some stuff, and each of those things requires knowing other stuff too, so you can see that it’s really a pretty deep subject. This is precisely why not many people self-host email themselves these days - the big guys have made it harder and harder to do so, in the name of eradicating spam, which they themselves are the biggest vectors for.