Rel4tion-Wiki/news/ml.mdwn

[[!tag /news]]
[[!meta title="Haskell Fun and E-Mail Server"]]
[[!meta updated="2015-04-06"]]

As usual for the last several entries, this is a general news update on recent
things happening here.

# Mail Server

Few months ago I switched from Citadel to Exim and Dovecot. The reason was some
features and flexibility I needed, which Citadel didn't provide. I found many
tutorials, and hoped to have some luck with the transition.

But Exim's and Dovecot's configuration files had other plans. I had trouble
setting them up together with PostgreSQL. IMAP did work, but something in the
Exim config was wrong, and I couldn't send anything. I also avoided moving all
my folders into the IMAP server because it wasn't stable and functional yet.
That meant I could read most of my e-mail only from home.

Yesterday I had some time, and I decided to try fixing the monster config. With
some help from nice people on IRC and over 12 hours of tinkering with the
config in attempts to debug all the issues, I was finally able to:

- Have all my e-mail in an IMAP server
- Receive e-mail from other servers (so far tried just few, needs more testing)
- Send e-mail and receive on the other side (needs more testing too)

The setup is simple this time. No SQL. I started documenting the process in
[[here|/people/fr33domlover/mail]], and I'll organize it better later to make
it easier to follow. With the basics working, I can add things like server-side
message filtering, POP and RSS aggregation and more.

This is not just a personal e-mail server: It's a community server, in the
sense that it's open to more users. I don't expect you or anyone else to hurry
to trust some random home server, but in case you do - I'll be happy to host
mailboxes here. But community also means that the users here are friends, so if
we never talked before, don't hesitate to change that.

In the next weeks I'll be using the server and testing it, especially its
ability to send e-mail. I suspect some SMTP servers may reject it. We'll see.
Maybe DKIM can help with that.

# Mailing Lists

Following the success with the mail server, I began installing and configuring
GNU Mailman. It's not like there are many people visiting this website (just a
guess, I don't track visitors), but a mailing list is an easy way to get
updates, express thoughts and make discussions.

At the time of writing there are no lists, but it seems the mailing list server
has the basics in place. See [[!rel4sub lists]].

I'll see if I can arrange some automated distribution script which sends the
same message to the mailing list and here as a news item. I suppose a git hook
will work: whenever there's a new news item committed, the git server will send
the content to a specific mailing list. Or I'll send it manually right after
committing, it's not a big deal. Integration with other things (e.g. GNU
social) would make automation more needed perhaps, but for now what I have it
probably enough: Website, RSS and soon a mailing list.

There will be a general purpose mailing list for **Rel4tion** soon.

# Haskell Fun

I'm working on the Idan parser. Going well. As part of it I created a small
utility project [[/projects/text-position]], which I hope to upload soon to
Hackage. It allows the parser to detect and report where in the file an error
occured, if it found one.

Using [[!hackage regex-applicative]], I'm writing a separate lexical analyser.
On top of that, I'll use [[!hackage parsec]]. Idan's syntax seems not to be as
easy as a small quick DSL, which may be bad for a first project, but I have a
plan for the worst case. If things get complicated, I'll write a parser for
[[/projects/Kort]] first, which is a much simpler language, and come back to
Idan with more experience.

# Jabber Federation

I tested the [[Jabber server|/access/jabber]]'s federation with Riseup. It just
works. I'm going to try migrating here my contacts from Riseup, and use this
home server as my primary Jabber server. As always, I invite everyone to use it
too, especially if you're home servers and decentralization.

[[!meta author=fr33domlover]]