Este pedo fue gracias a que me reescribí la forma en la que pyssg maneja los templates, ahora uso el sistema de jinja en vez del cochinero que hacía antes.

Y pues nada más eso, aquí está el primer post y por supuesto acá está el link del RSS https://art.luevano.xyz/rss.xml.

También me puse a acomodar un servidor de XMPP el cual, en pocas palabras, es un protocolo de mensajería instantánea (y más) descentralizado, por lo cual cada quien puede hacer una cuenta en el servidor que quiera y conectarse con cuentas creadas en otro servidor… exacto, como con los correos electrónicos. Y esto está perro porque si tú tienes tu propio server, así como con uno de correo electrónico, puedes controlar qué características tiene, quiénes pueden hacer cuenta, si hay end-to-end encryption (o mínimo end-to-server), entre un montón de otras cosas.

Ahorita este server es SUMISO (compliant en español, jeje) para jalar con la app conversations y con la red social movim, pero realmente funcionaría con casi cualquier cliente de XMPP, amenos que ese cliente implemente algo que no tiene mi server. Y también acomodé un server de Matrix que es muy similar pero es bajo otro protocolo y se siente más como un discord/slack (al menos en el element), muy chingón también.

Si bien aún quedan cosas por hacer sobre estos dos servers que me acomodé (además de hacerles unas entradas para documentar cómo lo hice), quiero moverme a otra cosa que sería acomodar una sección de dibujos, lo cual en teoría es bien sencillo, pero como quiero poder automatizar la publicación de estos, quiero modificar un poco el pyssg para que jale chido para este pex.

Ya por último también quiero moverle un poco al CSS, porque lo dejé en un estado muy culerón y quiero meterle/ajustar unas cosas para que quede más limpio y medianamente bonito… dentro de lo que cabe porque evidentemente me vale verga si se ve como una página del 2000.

The solution? Write a new program “from scratch” in pYtHoN. Yes it is bloated, yes it is in its early stages, but it works just as I want it to work, and I’m pretty happy so far with the results and have with even more ideas in mind to “optimize” and generally clean my wOrKfLoW to post new blog entries. I even thought of using it for posting into a “feed” like gallery for drawings or pictures in general.

I called it pyssg, because it sounds nice and it wasn’t taken in the PyPi. It is just a terminal program that reads either a configuration file or the options passed as flags when calling the program.

It still uses Markdown files because I find them very easy to work with. And instead of just having a “header” and a “footer” applied to each parsed entry, you will have templates (generated with the program) for each piece that I thought made sense (idea taken from blogit): the common header and footer, the common header and footer for each entry and, header, footer and list elements for articles and tags. When parsing the Markdown file these templates are applied and stitched together to make a single HTML file. Also generates an RSS feed and the sitemap.xml file, which is nice.

It might sound convoluted, but it works pretty well, with of course room to improve; I’m open to suggestions, issue reporting or direct contributions here. BTW, it only works on Linux for now (and don’t think on making it work on windows, but feel free to do PR for the compatibility).

That’s it for now, the new RSS feed is available here: https://blog.luevano.xyz/rss.xml.

Note that this is mostly for personal use, so there’s no user/authentication control other than that of SSH. Also, most if not all commands here are run as root.

Prerequisites

I might get tired of saying this (it’s just copy paste, basically)… but you will need the same prerequisites as before (check my website and mail entries), with the extras:

• (Optional, if you want a “front-end”) A CNAME for “git” and (optionally) “www.git”, or some other name for your sub-domains.
• An SSL certificate, if you’re following the other entries, add a git.conf and run certbot --nginx to extend the certificate.

Git

Git is a version control system.

If not installed already, install the git package:

pacman -S git

On Arch Linux, when you install the git package, a git user is automatically created, so all you have to do is decide where you want to store the repositories, for me, I like them to be on /home/git like if git was a “normal” user. So, create the git folder (with corresponding permissions) under /home and set the git user’s home to /home/git:

mkdir /home/git
chown git:git /home/git
usermod -d /home/git git

Also, the git user is “expired” by default and will be locked (needs a password), change that with:

chage -E -1 git
passwd git

Give it a strong one and remember to use PasswordAuthentication no for ssh (as you should). Create the .ssh/authorized_keys for the git user and set the permissions accordingly:

mkdir /home/git/.ssh
chmod 700 /home/git/.ssh
touch /home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 600 /home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys
chown -R git:git /home/git

Now is a good idea to copy over your local SSH public keys to this file, to be able to push/pull to the repositories. Do it by either manually copying it or using ssh‘s built in ssh-copy-id (for that you may want to check your ssh configuration in case you don’t let people access your server with user/password).

Next, and almost finally, we need to edit the git-daemon service, located at /usr/lib/systemd/system/ (called git-daemon@.service):

...
ExecStart=-/usr/lib/git-core/git-daemon --inetd --export-all --base-path=/home/git --enable=receive-pack
...

I just appended --enable=receive-pack and note that I also changed the --base-path to reflect where I want to serve my repositories from (has to match what you set when changing git user’s home).

Now, go ahead and start and enable the git-daemon socket:

systemctl start git-daemon.socket
systemctl enable git-daemon.socket

You’re basically done. Now you should be able to push/pull repositories to your server… except, you haven’t created any repository in your server, that’s right, they’re not created automatically when trying to push. To do so, you have to run (while inside /home/git):

git init --bare {repo_name}.git
chown -R git:git repo_name.git

Those two lines above will need to be run each time you want to add a new repository to your server (yeah, kinda lame… although there are options to “automate” this, I like it this way).

After that you can already push/pull to your repository. I have my repositories (locally) set up so I can push to more than one remote at the same time (my server, GitHub, GitLab, etc.); to do so, check this gist.

Cgit

Cgit is a fast web interface for git.

This is optionally since it’s only for the web application.

Install the cgit and fcgiwrap packages:

pacman -S cgit fcgiwrap

Now, just start and enable the fcgiwrap socket:

systemctl start fcgiwrap.socket
systemctl enable fcgiwrap.socket

Next, create the git.conf as stated in my nginx setup entry. Add the following lines to your git.conf file:

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    root /usr/share/webapps/cgit;
    server_name {yoursubdomain}.{yourdomain};
    try_files $uri @cgit;

    location @cgit {
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root/cgit.cgi;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $uri;
        fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $args;
        fastcgi_param HTTP_HOST $server_name;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/fcgiwrap.sock;
    }
}

Where the server_name line depends on you, I have mine setup to git.luevano.xyz and www.git.luevano.xyz. Optionally run certbot --nginx to get a certificate for those domains if you don’t have already.

Now, all that’s left is to configure cgit. Create the configuration file /etc/cgitrc with the following content (my personal options, pretty much the default):

css=/cgit.css
logo=/cgit.png

enable-http-clone=1
# robots=noindex, nofollow
virtual-root=/

repo.url={url}
repo.path={dir_path}
repo.owner={owner}
repo.desc={short_description}

...

Where you can uncomment the robots line to let web crawlers (like Google’s) to index your git web app. And at the end keep all your repositories (the ones you want to make public), for example for my dotfiles I have:

...
repo.url=.dots
repo.path=/home/git/.dots.git
repo.owner=luevano
repo.desc=These are my personal dotfiles.
...

Otherwise you could let cgit to automatically detect your repositories (you have to be careful if you want to keep “private” repos) using the option scan-path and setup .git/description for each repository. For more, you can check cgitrc(5).

By default you can’t see the files on the site, you need a highlighter to render the files, I use highlight. Install the highlight package:

pacman -S highlight

Copy the syntax-highlighting.sh script to the corresponding location (basically adding -edited to the file):

cp /usr/lib/cgit/filters/syntax-highlighting.sh /usr/lib/cgit/filters/syntax-highlighting-edited.sh

And edit it to use the version 3 and add --inline-css for more options without editing cgit‘s CSS file:

...
# This is for version 2
# exec highlight --force -f -I -X -S "$EXTENSION" 2>/dev/null

# This is for version 3
exec highlight --force --inline-css -f -I -O xhtml -S "$EXTENSION" 2>/dev/null
...

Finally, enable the filter in /etc/cgitrc configuration:

source-filter=/usr/lib/cgit/filters/syntax-highlighting-edited.sh

That would be everything. If you need support for more stuff like compressed snapshots or support for markdown, check the optional dependencies for cgit.

This configuration works for local users (users that appear in /etc/passwd), and does not use any type of SQL Database. And note that most if not all commands executed here are run with root privileges.

Prerequisites

Basically the same as with the website with Nginx and Certbot, with the extras:

• You will need a CNAME for “mail” and (optionally) “www.mail”, or whatever you want to call the sub-domains (although the RFC 2181 states that it NEEDS to be an A record, fuck the police).
• An SSL certificate. You can use the SSL certificate obtained following my last post using certbot (just create a mail.conf and run certbot --nginx again).
• Ports 25, 587 (SMTP), 465 (SMTPS), 143 (IMAP) and 993 (IMAPS) open on the firewall.

Postfix

Postfix is a “mail transfer agent” which is the component of the mail server that receives and sends emails via SMTP.

Install the postfix package:

pacman -S postfix

We have two main files to configure (inside /etc/postfix): master.cf (master(5)) and main.cf (postconf(5)). We’re going to edit main.cf first either by using the command postconf -e 'setting' or by editing the file itself (I prefer to edit the file).

Note that the default file itself has a lot of comments with description on what each thing does (or you can look up the manual, linked above), I used what Luke’s script did plus some other settings that worked for me.

Now, first locate where your website cert is, mine is at the default location /etc/letsencrypt/live/, so my certdir is /etc/letsencrypt/live/luevano.xyz. Given this information, change {yourcertdir} on the corresponding lines. The configuration described below has to be appended in the main.cf configuration file.

Certificates and ciphers to use for authentication and security:

smtpd_tls_key_file = {yourcertdir}/privkey.pem
smtpd_tls_cert_file = {yourcertdir}/fullchain.pem
smtpd_use_tls = yes
smtpd_tls_auth_only = yes
smtp_tls_security_level = may
smtp_tls_loglevel = 1
smtp_tls_CAfile = {yourcertdir}/cert.pem
smtpd_tls_mandatory_protocols = !SSLv2, !SSLv3, !TLSv1, !TLSv1.1
smtp_tls_mandatory_protocols = !SSLv2, !SSLv3, !TLSv1, !TLSv1.1
smtpd_tls_protocols = !SSLv2, !SSLv3, !TLSv1, !TLSv1.1
smtp_tls_protocols = !SSLv2, !SSLv3, !TLSv1, !TLSv1.1
tls_preempt_cipherlist = yes
smtpd_tls_exclude_ciphers = aNULL, LOW, EXP, MEDIUM, ADH, AECDH, MD5,
                DSS, ECDSA, CAMELLIA128, 3DES, CAMELLIA256,
                RSA+AES, eNULL

smtp_tls_CApath = /etc/ssl/certs
smtpd_tls_CApath = /etc/ssl/certs

smtpd_relay_restrictions = permit_sasl_authenticated, permit_mynetworks, defer_unauth_destination

Also, for the connection with dovecot, append the next few lines (telling postfix that dovecot will use user/password for authentication):

smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot
smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth
smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous, noplaintext
smtpd_sasl_tls_security_options = noanonymous

Specify the mailbox home (this is going to be a directory inside your user’s home containing the actual mail files):

home_mailbox = Mail/Inbox/

Pre-configuration to work seamlessly with dovecot and opendkim:

myhostname = {yourdomainname}
mydomain = localdomain
mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain, localhost

milter_default_action = accept
milter_protocol = 6
smtpd_milters = inet:127.0.0.1:8891
non_smtpd_milters = inet:127.0.0.1:8891
mailbox_command = /usr/lib/dovecot/deliver

Where {yourdomainname} is luevano.xyz in my case, or if you have localhost configured to your domain, then use localhost for myhostname (myhostname = localhost).

Lastly, if you don’t want the sender’s IP and user agent (application used to send the mail), add the following line:

smtp_header_checks = regexp:/etc/postfix/smtp_header_checks

And create the /etc/postfix/smtp_header_checks file with the following content:

/^Received: .*/     IGNORE
/^User-Agent: .*/   IGNORE

That’s it for main.cf, now we have to configure master.cf. This one is a bit more tricky.

First look up lines (they’re uncommented) smtp inet n - n - - smtpd, smtp unix - - n - - smtp and -o syslog_name=postfix/$service_name and either delete or uncomment them… or just run sed -i "/^\s*-o/d;/^\s*submission/d;/\s*smtp/d" /etc/postfix/master.cf as stated in Luke’s script.

Lastly, append the following lines to complete postfix setup and pre-configure for spamassassin.

smtp unix - - n - - smtp
smtp inet n - y - - smtpd
    -o content_filter=spamassassin
submission inet n - y - - smtpd
    -o syslog_name=postfix/submission
    -o smtpd_tls_security_level=encrypt
    -o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes
    -o smtpd_tls_auth_only=yes
smtps inet n - y - - smtpd
    -o syslog_name=postfix/smtps
    -o smtpd_tls_wrappermode=yes
    -o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes
spamassassin unix - n n - - pipe
    user=spamd argv=/usr/bin/vendor_perl/spamc -f -e /usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -f \${sender} \${recipient}

Now, I ran into some problems with postfix, one being smtps: Servname not supported for ai_socktype, to fix it, as Till posted in that site, edit /etc/services and add:

smtps 465/tcp
smtps 465/udp

Before starting the postfix service, you need to run newaliases first, but you can do a bit of configuration beforehand editing the file /etc/postfix/aliases. I only change the root: you line (where you is the account that will be receiving “root” mail). After you’re done, run:

postalias /etc/postfix/aliases
newaliases

At this point you’re done configuring postfix and you can already start/enable the postfix service:

systemctl start postfix.service
systemctl enable postfix.service

Dovecot

Dovecot is an IMAP and POP3 server, which is what lets an email application retrieve the mail.

Install the dovecot and pigeonhole (sieve for dovecot) packages:

pacman -S dovecot pigeonhole

On arch, by default, there is no /etc/dovecot directory with default configurations set in place, but the package does provide the example configuration files. Create the dovecot directory under /etc and, optionally, copy the dovecot.conf file and conf.d directory under the just created dovecot directory:

mkdir /etc/dovecot
cp /usr/share/doc/dovecot/example-config/dovecot.conf /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
cp -r /usr/share/doc/dovecot/example-config/conf.d /etc/dovecot

As Luke stated, dovecot comes with a lot of “modules” (under /etc/dovecot/conf.d/ if you copied that folder) for all sorts of configurations that you can include, but I do as he does and just edit/create the whole dovecot.conf file; although, I would like to check each of the separate configuration files dovecot provides I think the options Luke provides are more than good enough.

I’m working with an empty dovecot.conf file. Add the following lines for SSL and login configuration (also replace {yourcertdir} with the same certificate directory described in the Postfix section above, note that the < is required):

ssl = required
ssl_cert = <{yourcertdir}/fullchain.pem
ssl_key = <{yourcertdir}/privkey.pem
ssl_min_protocol = TLSv1.2
ssl_cipher_list = ALL:!RSA:!CAMELLIA:!aNULL:!eNULL:!LOW:!3DES:!MD5:!EXP:!PSK:!SRP:!DSS:!RC4:!SHA1:!SHA256:!SHA384:!LOW@STRENGTH
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers = yes
ssl_dh = </etc/dovecot/dh.pem

auth_mechanisms = plain login
auth_username_format = %n
protocols = $protocols imap

You may notice we specify a file we don’t have under /etc/dovecot: dh.pem. We need to create it with openssl (you should already have it installed if you’ve been following this entry and the one for nginx). Just run (might take a few minutes):

openssl dhparam -out /etc/dovecot/dh.pem 4096

After that, the next lines define what a “valid user is” (really just sets the database for users and passwords to be the local users with their password):

userdb {
    driver = passwd
}

passdb {
    driver = pam
}

Next, comes the mail directory structure (has to match the one described in the Postfix section). Here, the LAYOUT option is important so the boxes are .Sent instead of Sent. Add the next lines (plus any you like):

mail_location = maildir:~/Mail:INBOX=~/Mail/Inbox:LAYOUT=fs
namespace inbox {
    inbox = yes

    mailbox Drafts {
        special_use = \Drafts
        auto = subscribe
        }

    mailbox Junk {
        special_use = \Junk
        auto = subscribe
        autoexpunge = 30d
        }

    mailbox Sent {
        special_use = \Sent
        auto = subscribe
        }

    mailbox Trash {
        special_use = \Trash
        }

    mailbox Archive {
        special_use = \Archive
        }
}

Also include this so Postfix can use Dovecot’s authentication system:

service auth {
    unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth {
        mode = 0660
        user = postfix
        group = postfix
        }
}

Lastly (for Dovecot at least), the plugin configuration for sieve (pigeonhole):

protocol lda {
    mail_plugins = $mail_plugins sieve
}

protocol lmtp {
    mail_plugins = $mail_plugins sieve
}

plugin {
    sieve = ~/.dovecot.sieve
    sieve_default = /var/lib/dovecot/sieve/default.sieve
    sieve_dir = ~/.sieve
    sieve_global_dir = /var/lib/dovecot/sieve/

Where /var/lib/dovecot/sieve/default.sieve doesn’t exist yet. Create the folders:

mkdir -p /var/lib/dovecot/sieve

And create the file default.sieve inside that just created folder with the content:

require ["fileinto", "mailbox"];
if header :contains "X-Spam-Flag" "YES" {
    fileinto "Junk";
}

Now, if you don’t have a vmail (virtual mail) user, create one and change the ownership of the /var/lib/dovecot directory to this user:

grep -q "^vmail:" /etc/passwd || useradd -m vmail -s /usr/bin/nologin
chown -R vmail:vmail /var/lib/dovecot

Note that I also changed the shell for vmail to be /usr/bin/nologin. After that, to compile the configuration file run:

sievec /var/lib/dovecot/sieve/default.sieve

A default.svbin file will be created next to default.sieve.

Next, add the following lines to /etc/pam.d/dovecot if not already present (shouldn’t be there if you’ve been following these notes):

auth required pam_unix.so nullok
account required pam_unix.so

That’s it for Dovecot, at this point you can start/enable the dovecot service:

systemctl start dovecot.service
systemctl enable dovecot.service

OpenDKIM

OpenDKIM is needed so services like G**gle (we don’t mention that name here [[[this is a meme]]]) don’t throw the mail to the trash. DKIM stands for “DomainKeys Identified Mail”.

Install the opendkim package:

pacman -S opendkim

Generate the keys for your domain:

opendkim-genkey -D /etc/opendkim -d {yourdomain} -s {yoursubdomain} -r -b 2048

Where you need to change {yourdomain} and {yoursubdomain} (doesn’t really need to be the sub-domain, could be anything that describes your key) accordingly, for me it’s luevano.xyz and mail, respectively. After that, we need to create some files inside the /etc/opendkim directory. First, create the file KeyTable with the content:

{yoursubdomain}._domainkey.{yourdomain} {yourdomain}:{yoursubdomain}:/etc/opendkim/{yoursubdomain}.private

So, for me it would be:

mail._domainkey.luevano.xyz luevano.xyz:mail:/etc/opendkim/mail.private

Next, create the file SigningTable with the content:

*@{yourdomain} {yoursubdomain}._domainkey.{yourdomain}

Again, for me it would be:

*@luevano.xyz mail._domainkey.luevano.xyz

And, lastly create the file TrustedHosts with the content:

127.0.0.1
::1
10.1.0.0/16
1.2.3.4/24
localhost
{yourserverip}
...

And more, make sure to include your server IP and something like subdomain.domainname.

Next, edit /etc/opendkim/opendkim.conf to reflect the changes (or rather, addition) of these files, as well as some other configuration. You can look up the example configuration file located at /usr/share/doc/opendkim/opendkim.conf.sample, but I’m creating a blank one with the contents:

Domain {yourdomain}
Selector {yoursubdomain}

Syslog Yes
UserID opendkim

KeyFile /etc/opendkim/{yoursubdomain}.private
Socket inet:8891@localhost

Now, change the permissions for all the files inside /etc/opendkim:

chown -R root:opendkim /etc/opendkim
chmod g+r /etc/postfix/dkim/*

I’m using root:opendkim so opendkim doesn’t complain about the {yoursubdomani}.private being insecure (you can change that by using the option RequireSafeKeys False in the opendkim.conf file, as stated here).

That’s it for the general configuration, but you could go more in depth and be more secure with some extra configuration.

Now, just start/enable the opendkim service:

systemctl start opendkim.service
systemctl enable opendkim.service

And don’t forget to add the following TXT records on your domain registrar (these examples are for Epik):

1. DKIM entry: look up your {yoursubdomain}.txt file, it should look something like:

{yoursubdomain}._domainkey IN TXT ( "v=DKIM1; k=rsa; s=email; "
    "p=..."
    "..." )  ; ----- DKIM key mail for {yourdomain}

In the TXT record you will place {yoursubdomain}._domainkey as the “Host” and "v=DKIM1; k=rsa; s=email; " "p=..." "..." in the “TXT Value” (replace the dots with the actual value you see in your file).

2. DMARC entry: just _dmarc.{yourdomain} as the “Host” and "v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:dmarc@{yourdomain}; fo=1" as the “TXT Value”.

3. SPF entry: just @ as the “Host” and "v=spf1 mx a:{yoursubdomain}.{yourdomain} - all" as the “TXT Value”.

And at this point you could test your mail for spoofing and more.

SpamAssassin

SpamAssassin is just a mail filter to identify spam.

Install the spamassassin package (which will install a bunch of ugly perl packages…):

pacman -S spamassassin

For some reason, the permissions on all spamassassin stuff are all over the place. First, change owner of the executables, and directories:

chown spamd:spamd /usr/bin/vendor_perl/sa-*
chown spamd:spamd /usr/bin/vendor_perl/spam*
chwown -R spamd:spamd /etc/mail/spamassassin

Then, you can edit local.cf (located in /etc/mail/spamassassin) to fit your needs (I only uncommented the rewrite_header Subject ... line). And then you can run the following command to update the patterns and compile them:

sudo -u spamd sa-update
sudo -u spamd sa-compile

And since this should be run periodically, create the service spamassassin-update.service under /etc/systemd/system with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=SpamAssassin housekeeping
After=network.target

[Service]
User=spamd
Group=spamd
Type=oneshot

ExecStart=/usr/bin/vendor_perl/sa-update --allowplugins
SuccessExitStatus=1
ExecStart=/usr/bin/vendor_perl/sa-compile
ExecStart=/usr/bin/systemctl -q --no-block try-restart spamassassin.service

And you could also execute sa-learn to train spamassassin‘s bayes filter, but this works for me. Then create the timer spamassassin-update.timer under the same directory, with the content:

[Unit]
Description=SpamAssassin housekeeping

[Timer]
OnCalendar=daily
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

You can now start/enable the spamassassin-update timer:

systemctl start spamassassin-update.timer
systemctl enable spamassassin-update.timer

Next, you may want to edit the spamassassin service before starting and enabling it, because by default, it could spawn a lot of “childs” eating a lot of resources and you really only need one child. Append --max-children=1 to the line ExecStart=... in /usr/bin/systemd/system/spamassassin.service:

...
ExecStart=/usr/bin/vendor_perl/spamd -x -u spamd -g spamd --listen=/run/spamd/spamd.sock --listen=localhost --max-children=1
...

Finally, start and enable the spamassassin service:

systemctl start spamassassin.service
systemctl enable spamassassin.service

Wrapping up

We should have a working mail server by now. Before continuing check your journal logs (journalctl -xe --unit={unit}, where {unit} could be spamassassin.service for example) to see if there was any error whatsoever and try to debug it, it should be a typo somewhere (the logs are generally really descriptive) because all the settings and steps detailed here just (literally just finished doing everything on a new server as of the writing of this text) worked (((it just werks on my machine))).

Now, to actually use the mail service: first of all, you need a normal account (don’t use root) that belongs to the mail group (gpasswd -a user group to add a user user to group group) and that has a password.

Next, to actually login into a mail app/program/whateveryouwanttocallit, you will use the following settings, at least for thunderdbird(I tested in windows default mail app and you don’t need a lot of settings):

• * server: subdomain.domain (mail.luevano.xyz in my case)
• SMTP port: 587
• SMTPS port: 465 (I use this one)
• IMAP port: 143
• IMAPS port: 993 (again, I use this one)
• Connection/security: SSL/TLS
• Authentication method: Normal password
• Username: just your user, not the whole email (david in my case)
• Password: your user password (as in the password you use to login to the server with that user)

All that’s left to do is test your mail server for spoofing, and to see if everything is setup correctly. Go to DKIM Test and follow the instructions (basically click next, and send an email with whatever content to the email that they provide). After you send the email, you should see something like:

Finally, that’s actually it for this entry, if you have any problem whatsoever you can contact me.

As a side note, (((i use arch btw))) so everything here es aimed at an Arch Linux distro, and I’m doing everything on a VPS. Also note that most if not all commands here are executed with root privileges.

Prerequisites

You will need two things:

• A domain name (duh!). I got mine on Epik (affiliate link, btw).
  • With the corresponding A and AAA records pointing to the VPS’ IPs (“A” record points to the ipv4 address and “AAA” to the ipv6, basically). I have three records for each type: empty one, “www” and “*” for a wildcard, that way “domain.name”, “www.domain.name”, “anythingelse.domain.name” point to the same VPS (meaning that you can have several VPS for different sub-domains).
• A VPS or somewhere else to host it. I’m using Vultr (also an affiliate link).
  • With ssh already configured both on the local machine and on the remote machine.
  • Firewall already configured to allow ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS). I use ufw so it’s just a matter of doing ufw allow 80,443/tcp as root and you’re golden.
  • cron installed if you follow along (you could use systemd timers, or some other method you prefer to automate running commands every X time).

Nginx

Nginx is a web (HTTP) server and reverse proxy server.

You have two options: nginx and nginx-mainline. I prefer nginx-mainline because it’s the “up to date” package even though nginx is labeled to be the “stable” version. Install the package and enable/start the service:

pacman -S nginx-mainline
systemctl enable nginx.service
systemctl start nginx.service

And that’s it, at this point you can already look at the default initial page of Nginx if you enter the IP of your server in a web browser. You should see something like this:

As stated in the welcome page, configuration is needed, head to the directory of Nginx:

cd /etc/nginx

Here you have several files, the important one is nginx.conf, which as its name implies, contains general configuration of the web server. If you peek into the file, you will see that it contains around 120 lines, most of which are commented out and contains the welcome page server block. While you can configure a website in this file, it’s common practice to do it on a separate file (so you can scale really easily if needed for mor websites or sub-domains).

Inside the nginx.conf file, delete the server blocks and add the lines include sites-enabled/*; (to look into individual server configuration files) and types_hash_max_size 4096; (to get rid of an ugly warning that will keep appearing) somewhere inside the http block. The final nginx.conf file would look something like (ignoring the comments just for clarity, but you can keep them as side notes):

worker_processes 1;

events {
    worker_connections 1024;
}

http {
    include sites-enabled/*;
    include mime.types;
    default_type application/octet-stream;

    sendfile on;

    keepalive_timeout 65;

    types_hash_max_size 4096;
}

Next, inside the directory /etc/nginx/ create the sites-available and sites-enabled directories, and go into the sites-available one:

mkdir sites-available
mkdir sites-enabled
cd sites-available

Here, create a new .conf file for your website and add the following lines (this is just the sample content more or less):

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    root /path/to/root/directory;
    server_name domain.name another.domain.name;
    index index.html anotherindex.otherextension;

    location /{
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

That could serve as a template if you intend to add more domains.

Note some things:

• listen: we’re telling Nginx which port to listen to (IPv4 and IPv6, respectively).
• root: the root directory of where the website files (.html, .css, .js, etc. files) are located. I followed Luke’s directory path /var/www/some_folder.
• server_name: the actual domain to “listen” to (for my website it is: server_name luevano.xyz www.luevano.xyz; and for this blog is: server_name blog.luevano.xyz www.blog.luevano.xyz;).
• index: what file to serve as the index (could be any .html, .htm, .php, etc. file) when just entering the website.
• location: what goes after domain.name, used in case of different configurations depending on the URL paths (deny access on /private, make a proxy on /proxy, etc).
  • try_files: tells what files to look for.

Then, make a symbolic link from this configuration file to the sites-enabled directory:

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/your_config_file.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

This is so the nginx.conf file can look up the newly created server configuration. With this method of having each server configuration file separate you can easily “deactivate” any website by just deleting the symbolic link in sites-enabled and you’re good, or just add new configuration files and keep everything nice and tidy.

All you have to do now is restart (or enable and start if you haven’t already) the Nginx service (and optionally test the configuration):

nginx -t
systemctl restart nginx

If everything goes correctly, you can now go to your website by typing domain.name on a web browser. But you will see a “404 Not Found” page like the following (maybe with different Nginx version):

That’s no problem, because it means that the web server it’s actually working. Just add an index.html file with something simple to see it in action (in the /var/www/some_folder that you decided upon). If you keep seeing the 404 page make sure your root line is correct and that the directory/index file exists.

I like to remove the .html and trailing / on the URLs of my website, for that you need to add the following rewrite lines and modify the try_files line (for more: Sean C. Davis: Remove HTML Extension And Trailing Slash In Nginx Config):

server {
    ...
    rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent;
    rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent;
    ...
    try_files $uri/index.html $uri.html $uri/ $uri =404;
    ...

Certbot

Certbot is what provides the SSL certificates via Let’s Encrypt.

The only “bad” (bloated) thing about Certbot, is that it uses python, but for me it doesn’t matter too much. You may want to look up another alternative if you prefer. Install the packages certbot and certbot-nginx:

pacman -S certbot certbot-nginx

After that, all you have to do now is run certbot and follow the instructions given by the tool:

certbot --nginx

It will ask you for some information, for you to accept some agreements and the names to activate HTTPS for. Also, you will want to “say yes” to the redirection from HTTP to HTTPS. And that’s it, you can now go to your website and see that you have HTTPS active.

Now, the certificate given by certbot expires every 3 months or something like that, so you want to renew this certificate every once in a while. Using cron, you can do this by running:

crontab -e

And a file will be opened where you need to add a new rule for Certbot, just append the line: 1 1 1 * * certbot renew (renew on the first day of every month) and you’re good. Alternatively use systemd timers as stated in the Arch Linux Wiki.

That’s it, you now have a website with SSL certificate.

Ya lo único que queda es cambiar un poco el formato del blog (y de la página en general), porque en un momento de desesperación puse todo el texto en justificado y pues no se ve chido siempre, entonces queda corregir eso. Y aunque me tomó más tiempo del que quisiera, así nomás quedó, diría un cierto personaje.

El ssg modificado está en mis dotfiles (o directamente aquí).

Por último, también quité las extensiones .html de las URLs, porque se veía bien pitero, pero igual los links con .html al final redirigen a su link sin .html, así que no hay rollo alguno.

At the moment, I’m not satisfied because there’s no automatic date insertion into the 1) html file, 2) the blog post itself and 3) the listing system in the blog homepage (and there’s also the problem with the ordering of the entries…). And all of this just because I didn’t want to use Luke’s solution (don’t really like that much how he handles the scripts… but they just work).

Hopefully, for tomorrow all of this will be sorted out and I’ll have a working blog system.