"Neodymium-Paladium for Pi" project alias "NDPD-for-Pi"
This project was conducted several years ago with the purpose of creating a server based on a Raspberry Pi, targeted to Home or SME usage, that could provide the following functionality :
- A web site, consisting mainly of static info pages
- A wiki to publish articles
- A mail server capable of both sending and receiving emails from and to the world
- The ability to securely accommodate email accounts of a family or employees of a small office
The open-source products selected to serve each function were respectively:
- Nginx as the web server
- Dokuwiki as a file based wiki, not requiring a database that would cause wear of the SD
- Postfix
- Dovecot, in a file-based mailbox implementation
Hence the name of the project was set to “NDPD-for-Pi”.
Additional and mandatory requirements were:
- Low power consumption
- 24×7 operation with minimal admin effort
- Minimal wear of the SD card
- Usage of an acquired domain name
- Support of Let's Encrypt certificates
Although the project was implemented successfully, there were a lot of issues that required continuous updates, caused by:
- Updates of the Raspbian - Rasperry Pi OS
- Updates of the hardware, where the larger memory could allow running everything on memory
- Change in the ISP policies. Providers no longer allow using port 25, requiring the mediation of an email broker
- Change in the security policies of main mail operators, where they no longer allow receiving mail from dynamic IP addresses, as well as being strict on SPF, DMARC and DKIM.
All the above made the project obsolete for functional usage after 2019. Therefore, I decided to withdraw the huge amount of chapters that were covering the implementation and support of this endeavour and reduce the internet clutter of obsolete articles. Sorry…