debops VS Mail-in-a-Box

I'm planning on adding to the litany of tutorials on this soon. My process is to use debops to provision and secure a VPS and install the docker service. The app is spun up with docker-compose and the appropriate containers - if you use something like cookiecutter-django you can get a basis for the docker compose files you need. This uses traefik as the proxy for gunicorn instead of nginx, and then you'll need to serve static and media either with whitenoise or with S3.

I wrote a set of Ansible roles in DebOps that let you build and install LXD from source on Debian. You can check out the role itself and it's documentation. It's not a perfect solution, but it can enable you to use LXD without snaps on Debian.

If you are committed to Debian environment, perhaps DebOps would be an interesting alternative (disclaimer: I'm the maintainer of the project). DebOps is a set of Ansible playbooks and roles + some scripts that let you deploy and manage Debian-based clusters. It has extensive documentation, supports LDAP deployment and is actively maintained.

GitHub: https://github.com/debops/debops/releases/tag/v2.3.0

It's not strictly for Azure, but you can check out DebOps (disclaimer: I'm the maintainer). It's a set of Ansible playbooks and roles to manage Debian-based infrastructure, created completely in the open. You can use it as a base to build up your own infrastructure. Roles are designed to be reusable and can pass configuration between them using dependent variables, everything can be configured through Ansible inventory since you are not expected to modify the roles themselves.

Looks like that apt role has a Linuxmint dictionary key missing, somewhere where OS distributions are specified. You can look at the apt role defaults and add it in a few places where Debian, Devuan and Ubuntu are specified. The role's fact script could also be fixed to handle cases like that gracefully. I'll see what I can do.

DebOps has you covered - there are roles for slapd, nslcd, nscd, ldap role can be used to manage objects in the LDAP directory itself from other roles, and so on. Check the slapd role documentation for the server-side details, and the ldap role documentation for the client-side details.

may i recommend https://mailinabox.email ?

I don't see why we are a long way away. At the sandstorm end, we need to get to the point, where all updates (of both sandstorm and the apps) on the user machine are automatic. Much like they are automatic on various OSes (mobile OSes in particular but also MacOS/Windows). This is not impossible if a single OS like Debian-testing is targeted.

Mailinabox [1] almost does it. They target Ubuntu stable, and upgrades are mostly silent. But they needed user intervention when Ubuntu had to be upgraded from 18.10 to 22.04, which was quite challenging.

If sandstorm can get there, then putting it into a RPi box is simple. What's difficult is helping the general public understand the importance of protecting their data, so such a product has a reasonable market.

[1] https://mailinabox.email/

If you have a better solution, for example a good provider who offer agency packages which allows many domains and there is no catch, for example very small disk space, then hit me right away. Otherwise, please share your experience with hosting your own mail service. I found https://mailinabox.email/ and https://www.iredmail.org/ for example, but never had any experience with neither of them.

mailinabox.email works great on a basic vps.