Community Coffee Break

Solbu
- Describes the pros and cons of self-hosting a mail server
- Started self-hosting 20+ years ago when he was getting a lot of spam while using his internet providers email service.
- Uses postfix plus some spam add-ons.
- You must be able to open port 25 from outside to your mail server.
- This likely requires that you "bridge" your internet modem, although your internal modem must provide credentials to keep your internet connection alive to the internet providers server.
- Ports 25 and 465 (the encrypted SMTP port) needs to be open for incoming smtp traffic, even if you configure the mailserver to require encrypted incoming traffic.
- You can use POP3 from outside the network to retrieve mail, but make sure you set the switch in your client to leave the email on the server.
- Your MX (mail exchange) records must point to your public IP address (which you will NAT internally to your mail server).
- Best if you have static IP addresses for this, but dynamic IP address can be handled as well.
- Many years ago Solbu offered to fix a broken radio at a relatives place. He partially disassembled it, then put it back together and it just started working again.
- bp9 describes how just disassembling and reassembling will make it work just because Soblu dislodged some tarnish and restored a good grounding connection when he put it all back together.
- Solbu described a video that he saw! Relating to a phone that Leo Laporte loaned to a colleague and when he got it back, the language was all messed up (Chinese?) LOL

Doug
- Has replaced the fan in his laptop and all is well.
- Ended up tearing the laptop almost completely apart.
- It was not a similar experience to Robbies because the laptop was not the same brand.
- Doug ended up finding a youtube video that addresses his exact laptop so that helped him a lot.
- Only had to replace the fan, not the entire cooling framework.
- Is looking forward to visiting family soon.

Peter
- Wonders why bp9 does not have any DSL filters on his phone lines?
- bp9 describes how his new service has hardware at the very head of the line to split off DSL and POTS so filters are no longer required.
- Peter is still dealing with postal service issues.
- Shows us a very interesting GPS receiver that he uses to get a proper stable 10 MHz (Megahertz) signal.
- bp9 is having trouble understanding what the signal is being used for.
- It seems like Peter is only interested in a stable frequency for testing, not any data you might be able to pull off the GPS satellites.
- Describes how you can get a stable frequency with Rubidium.
- Unfortunately it only works when Peter has a good GPS signal but he's not having any luck getting a good fix.
- Also, if he wants to pull any data (like time of day) from the unit, it has a serial port (RS-232) but no network port.
- The data coming off the unit is written in Chinese???

bp9
- Notes how verbose email server logging is and therefore how much the email provider can see without even trying.
- Thinks most of the pieces that Solbu mentioned are in place but is too chicken to bridge his modem! :-)
- aDSL is working much better now that the DSL line has been moved to a different pair. Now two of the four pairs of telephone lines are in use, but internet looks to be much more solid now.
- AT&T UVerse does not do a 100% bridge when you bridge your modem, the authentication that Solbu mentions is still done in the modem even when you bridge the modem.
- Solbu wonders if bp9 will have the authority to bridge the modem with his credentials, and he does.
- Talks about his Pinephone running Arch Linux and that it is still working well, although it might not be ready to use as a daily driver yet, just because he's not sure he has all the software in place yet.
- Describes how his USB-C port may not work with a dongle because the main board in this model does not fully implement the USB-C hardware protocol. Will have to remove (and replace?) some transistors on the main board to enable that functionality.