I’m buried in final corrections for Run Your Own Mail Server so here’s a snippet from that.
You must be comfortable acquiring and managing TLS and the associated X.509 certificates. Email did not always require TLS, but certificate prices have plunged to zero so TLS is fairly standard. This book uses Let’s Encrypt certificates maintained by ACME, and presumes you can do the same. If your organization insists on purchasing expensive certificates and maintaining them by hand, you are welcome to do so.
We will also use outside services to support email troubleshooting. These are all services that can be replaced if you write custom code, a skill set that does not overlap with running mail servers. I’m certain that immediately after this book escapes someone will release a package that lets us easily handle said debugging.
From now on, I will toss around terms like network port and X.509 certificate and floccinaucinihilipilification and expect you to either know what they mean or how to look them up. You cannot suffer from hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia and run an email server.
Fascinatingly, spell check recognizes floccinaucinihilipilification but not hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Also, my copyeditor demanded–and got–combat pay.