I am very happily communicating with friends and family through ejabberd via a domain name on the freedombox DDNS server. Initially I thought I would just be patient and wait for the day when MX records are available on that server, but I’m practically giddy over the freedombox and have decided, probably foolishly, to try to set up email anyway.
I have another domain I use for a nextcloud instance. It has configurable MX records. Could someone please tell me: Is it possible to use that other domain for email but keep my freedombox.rocks domain name for everything else? I don’t want to jostle my ejabberd correspondents. If they have to reconfigure settings I’m not sure they’ll bother, and I’m afraid it will be more proof to them that Free Software is a burden, buggy, doesn’t work, etc.
If I had to go 100% on the other domain to get mail working, could I point the freedombox.rocks address at that domain, so I don’t have to ask my ejabberd folks to change their settings?
Hey NaiB!
I have already asked that question a while ago, cause I also had the same issue/idea as you. Please refer to my post, as @Avron has covered this topic perfectly with his answer. See here: Setting up Postfix/Dovecot under a different domain
Cheers!
Thank you Shoxy. I’m sorry I didn’t see Avron’s amazing post before I wrote my question. Ged, thank you for your very complete description of what you did. I will read both a few more times and then consider what to do!
Is it silly to want to use the freedombox DDNS service rather than others? If I am managing a domain name at a commercial firm (in my case, dreamhost), does that firm have any ability to sell data of mine? Can they see my activity at all?
If using the Freedombox DDNS service is preferable, is there a way I can help accelerate its expansion to include MX records? I would like to live in an ideal world.
I suppose you mean “if I register a domain name at a commercial firm”.
If that firm provides the authoritative DNS server for the domain you registered, that firm can see requests to translate that domain name to an IP address, so it can see when they come and from which source IP address. The firm will not see every request though because computers store the result for some time, and they contact a DNS resolver which can reply without asking authoritative DNS server if they have store the result and the time is not expired (if I am not wrong, you can configure that expiry time).
The request to translate has no data besides source and the name in your domain, then the computer contacts your freedombox directly without any involvement of the DNS server, the traffic does not go through them.