Comment by JohnTHaller
10 years ago
And ensuring it stays running and updated and secure and backed up. Docker isn't magic. A server instance and the associated apps still need to be maintained. And you're either trusting the creator of that Docker image or digging into every security setting anyway.
Updated is usually barely a problem, there hasn't been a serious postfix vulnerability since 2011 or a dovecot one since 2013 (and even the 2013 one wouldn't necessarily affect you as an individual user). One update every 3-5 years is not exactly something I'd call a problem. I don't update unless there's a major vulnerability and it's one I'm affected by.
Rebuilding your docker when you hear about that is not exactly something I'd consider a big deal, but I guess if 2 minutes work every 3 years is worth giving away your privacy, then you do that.
Backup is a set and forget cron job (tarsnap mail dir), so I don't see how that's an issue.
You still have to update the OS or whatever you're running the mailserver on. You have to make sure it's not compromised nor DDosed, it doesn't run out of space, it doesn't crash or get stuck for whatever reason, etc etc.
Again, Docker isn't magic.
Updating the OS... usually a fairly rare occurence again, kernel vulnerabilities that affect you with minimal services exposed are quite rare, most vulnerabilities are local escalations and such which wouldn't affect just a mail server. When was the last remote root exploit in the linux kernel? Maybe SSH which would be the only other thing you might run... Neither is within my memory. I suspect these would be ever less frequent than mail service updates, if ever.
As for the rest those aren't really issues you need to actively watch, you'll just know when something goes wrong to take a look. I can't see running out of disk with just a mail service, crashes are... never and compromise/DDoS isn't really a risk if you secure it properly to begin with and update it that once every few years. It's really very hands off if you're not running any other services and just review the vulnerabilities.
I'm guessing this is even less of a problem for most of us though because I and probably many others around here already run a personal dev server which is kept up to date regularly, so I was speaking simply to adding mail functionality to an existing system previously.
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