Arch Server Progress

[Madchatthew]

I have my arch server web host setup and running. I have Nginx, Mariadb, PHP, PHP-fpm and phpmyadmin. I have each website under it’s own user in the home directory to keep the sites separate and more secure. I have to say that it was a lot of fun to set it up and I have been learning a lot in regards to arch linux and setting things up and such.

I am currently in the process of installing the email server using postfix, dovecot and postfixadmin. By setting this up manually, I have been learning a lot with how an email server works and such. One of the things I have learned is that most of the tutorials are for Debian or Ubuntu or one of the other more popular OSs. I have been using a tutorial not for Arch but then also referencing Arch instructions to complement the tutorial.

It has been a lot of fun. I have been updating my dev environment every couple of day and verifying that things are working. Then once a week I have been updating my production server. I update my dev environment every couple of days so that if I need the latest update for security reasons or what have you, I can do the update on the production server sooner to cover whatever may be happening.

I know I have a lot more to learn and look forward to that as well. So far this has been a fun journey and I look forward to learning more.

[phenomlab]

@Madchatthew I have to admire the bravery here in the sense that not only are you using Arch without any real “hard and fast” guides, but also are doing everything individually instead of relying on something like Webmin or Virtualmin. Whilst this is daunting, it’s absolutely the best way to learn in my view, as it forces you to roll up your sleeves and get under the hood.

Postfix and Dovecot can equally prove to be very challenging. There are a number of guides on the internet in relation to best configuration settings, although some of these are sadly either outdated, or completely wrong (or in some cases, both!).

All in, a great update - keep us posted!

[Madchatthew]

@phenomlab Yeah, they are both very challenging. I’m not completely done with setting them up yet and have a ways to go. I can see how using Webmin/Virtual min is really nice because they take care of all that stuff for you. It is nice to learn and see how everything works under the hood. I don’t know if I will remember all of it, but I have enjoyed going through this process.

I am able to send emails from my server now, so I am doing something right, hahaha! I would say that I am about 1/2 way done with the whole email server setup. This has been spending anywhere from 2 to 4 hours on it at a time. My schedule doesn’t allow me to sit and get it done all in one day. I never realized how involved and time consuming setting up an email server can be.

[DownPW]

good job

[Madchatthew]

@DownPW said in Arch Server Progress:

good job

Thank you very much!

[Madchatthew]

I just installed Redis today and am using that for caching with the two Wordpress sites that I have on my server. I wanted to install Redis anyways in case if I ever start using Nodebb I can have the multiple sessions going to make it faster.

The wordpress sites run super fast as well after adding and configuring them to work with Redis. I need to configure Redis a little more but for the most part it is working great.

[phenomlab]

@Madchatthew yes, it takes time, but no so much once you grow accustomed to the process. After a while you get a sense of what will work and what will not, and it also pays - certainly in the sense of PostFix to keep a golden configuration file that you know works.

It’s disturbingly easy to take PostFix offline with one single mistake.

[Madchatthew]

@phenomlab yeah I have been reading about that as well in regard to Postfix. One little piece forgotten or changed in any little way can topple the whole thing down haha. It is crazy. And also, thank you for reminding me that once I get everything working and running to make a copy of those config files. That will help in the future and just may save my bacon.

[Madchatthew]

I wanted to give an update on this. I have been working on trying to get a postfix, dovecot along with a couple of other programs working on this server. So far I have been unsuccessful. I am not giving up though and plan on starting a new thread to document each step that I take. Maybe someone will be able to see my mistake that I made or what I am missing and be able to help figure it out.

I know it would be easier to just go through one of the mail websites that are out there, but I would really like to learn this process.

[phenomlab]

@Madchatthew Feel free to post the issues here

[Madchatthew]

Well, I must say that I was finally able to get email working on my Arch server. I still need to setup postgrey and some spam assassin, get the dmarc and spf and one or two others setup and then it should be good to go for the most part. I am mainly using it to be able to send mail from websites, but having the option to have a separate email for their domains will be very nice.

Once my brain solidifies after all of that, I will share what what I did. One thing I found is that it is important to just take it piece by piece and get each part working before moving on to the next. Also, test test test after each change, or each section.

[Madchatthew]

I also wanted to post this. Here are the latest stats for the server so far. This is with all of the software setup and running along with doing updates once a week after testing them on my dev test server and making sure websites function properly.

[Madchatthew]

100 days up and running. I have been doing updates each week and websites running strong and fast. I do not regret my decision of switching to Arch.

[phenomlab]

@Madchatthew is this self hosted, or a VPS?

[Madchatthew]

@phenomlab It is a VPS on Hetzner.

[Madchatthew]

So last week I updated my production server, so it had been two weeks since being updated due to being busy the week before and I didn’t have any issues after the upgrade. So far I haven’t had to restart this server and the websites are up and running very well. So I hope it stays that way.

[Madchatthew]

So I was updating the server today and realized I didn’t have Reflector running on it. So I install that and set it up to run as a service. So my hope is that the mirrorlist will always stay updated so I won’t have the error pop up in case I were to miss a bunch of upgrades for some reason.

[Madchatthew]

So my next project with the Arch Server is to get the email working properly on it. I actually do have it setup so I can set up the email account in an email client. The part I am having trouble with is setting up the email to be able to send from a WordPress site. I put in the information that I do for the email client and it just won’t send the email out. I also believe that it won’t send to a Gmail account so I think I have something not entered in correctly for the dmarc or the spf. So I need to figure that out, but once I do, I should have a fully functional email server that works for different applications.

[phenomlab]

@Madchatthew Are you using Postfix for this in terms of the back-end?

[Madchatthew]

@phenomlab yes, postfix and dovecot.