[Zoho Mail](https://www.zoho.com/mail/) is a great mail host that supports free custom domains.  Here are the steps to get it all put together.



## Olden Days

Gmail is a great email web app. They have great spam filtering, and the UI is snappy.  In the olden days, they offered free custom domains if you used the Google Apps for Business.  That has all been monetized by a subscription these days.  The G Suite will cost you $5-10 a month.  This is reasonable, but free is better.

## 0. Buy a Domain

If you want an email (eg, `hi`) on a custom domain (eg, `jaketrent.com`) -- together something like `hi@jaketrent.com` -- you first need a domain.  I buy new domains these days at [Namecheap](https://affiliate.namecheap.com/?affId=116695).

## 1. Setup DNS

Once you have bought and registered the domain, you want to have DNS management somewhere.  I use [Cloudflare](https://www.cloudflare.com/).  They have a free tier that is great.  After you've signed up for Cloudflare, point your Namecheap domain to the DNS servers on Cloudflare.  For details, follow this [Namecheap tutorial](https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9607/2210/how-to-set-up-dns-records-for-your-domain-in-cloudflare-account).

## 2. Sign up for Zoho Mail

The only mail host I know of that will support free hosting with a custom domain is [Zoho Mail](https://www.zoho.com/mail/).  They have have cloned a few Google Apps-like programs, including Mail.  

It's free to sign up for Zoho Workplace (like Google Apps).  This is not a trial.  As far as I can tell, it's permanently free.  The usage limits for the [free tier of Mail](https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html) are reasonable enough.  5GB mail storage is kind of low.  $2/mo will bump you to 30GB.  But hey, free, right?

When you sign up for Zoho Workplaces, use your new/intended email address (eg, `hi@jaketrent.com`).  The password you choose will be your email password.

The rest of the steps here are included in a nice Zoho Mail wizard on "Domain Setup" that you are automatically brought into after signing up...

## 3. Verify the Domain

Zoho will ask you to add a `CNAME` entry to your Cloudflare DNS setup.  In Cloudflare, go to "DNS", then select your new domain.  In the DNS records, select type `CNAME` and enter the verification value as prompted by Zoho.  Once you've saved this DNS record, Zoho will immediately verify it.

## 4. Setup MX Records

Now Zoho knows you own the domain and the DNS record, so they want you to create two `MX` records for your email that point to Zoho's mail server: `mx.zoho.com` and `mx2.zoho.com`.  Set these according to the Zoho wizard instructions.

## 5. Setup Mail Protection

There are a couple steps to make your email more secure that Zoho will prompt you to make.  The first is to setup SPF (Send Policy Framework).  This is accomplished by adding a `TXT` record to Cloudflare that makes it harder for the bad guys to send email and make it look like it came from you.  The second step is to setup DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail).  This will make it more likely that your email, the mail host, and the domain all look legit and don't end up in spam folders.  Zoho walks your through both these steps in its wizard.

## 6. Setup Email Client

Zoho has a nice web app for email.  It looks like they're taking their design cues from Outlook.com.  If you want just the web client, you're set.

If you want to setup a desktop client, you have an additional step.  First of all, Zoho Mail is not IMAP-enabled by default.  You need to open the Zoho mail webapp, click the gear in the top right to see settings.  Under Mail Settings > Email Forwarding and POP/IMAP, you'll find IMAP Access.  Change the status to `Enabled`.

Next, find a desktop client you like.  I have been messing with [Spark.app](https://sparkmailapp.com/). Inside your mail client, create a new account.  Supply the new email address and password used to sign up with Zoho Workplace in the beginning.  The custom domain incoming mail server is `imappro.zoho.com`.  The outgoing mail server is `smtp.zoho.com`.  The Zoho Mail setup wizard will have more details about the mail servers.  

Once you've setup your email client, send an email from some other existing email account your own to your new Zoho Mail account using your custom domain email.  Seeing it come through is prety fun.

Are there parts of this process that trip you up?  How about different providers you've found that work better?  Good luck, and enjoy your new custom domain email address!

Zoho Mail is a great mail host that supports free custom domains.  Here are the steps to setup.

Setup Email Address With a Custom Domain for Free

When you connect to a remote server, you're connecting over ssh or scp or a similar protocol.  In each case, you may have to provide some authentication credentials to prove you are who you say you are.  This can come in the form of a user/password combo, but if you're connecting a lot or if you're trying to setup a non-interactive connection, this can become either really monotonous or really problematic.  Public/private keys will come to our rescue, and we'll never need to enter our password again.



```bash
> ssh-keygen
```

You can, but don't need to protect your private key with a passphrase.  It is private, after all.  The default names are:

- Private: id_rsa
- Public: id_rsa.pub

Now you need to share your public key with the remote server:

```bash
> scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub myUsername@remoteServer:
```

The trailing colon will separate your hostname from the destination path and drop it in your default/home directory on the server.  Now, get into the remote server for the last time using that antiquated password of yours:

```bash
> ssh myUsername@remoteServer
```

Once here, we need to put the public key in a file that will be used for incoming connections:

```bash
> mkdir ~/.ssh
> mv ~/id_rsa.pub ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
```

And make sure that the permissions are locked down for security reasons:

```bash
> cd ~/.ssh
> chmod 700 .
> chmod 600 id_rsa.pub
```

Jump back to your local box and prep your private key for your next ssh/scp connection:

```bash
> eval `ssh-agent`
> ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
```

Note that we're adding our private key only.  If you had a passphrase on your private key, you'll be prompted for it at this point.  Voila!  You're next connection to that remote server should not require a password.  Try it!:

```bash
> ssh myUsername@remoteServer
```

When you connect to a remote server, you're connecting over ssh or scp or a similar protocol.  In each case, you may have to provide some authentication cre

Setup Public/Private Key

When you setup your computer at the time of your initial Ubuntu installation, you assign your computer a hostname.  In my case, I gave it a hostname and then later wanted to change it to something else.  This is accomplished in two easy steps.  



First, 

```bash
sudo emacs /etc/hostname
```

, and overwrite the hostname with the new hostname.  This will make it so the correct name is show when running the hostname command. Second, 

```bash
sudo emacs /etc/hosts
```

, and overwrite the hostname here.  This will allow you to use sudo successfully and network applications to run.  This was done on Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic).

When you setup your computer at the time of your initial Ubuntu installation, you assign your computer a hostname.  In my case, I gave it a hostname and the

Change hostname on Ubuntu

I had some fun this morning when the headless box that I'm ssh'ing into to do test app runs randomly changed IP address.  My goal was to find it on the network from my local box.  To my rescue: a cool tool called nmap.



nmap, according to the man page, is a network exploration tool and security/port scanner.  Basically, I only ran it in a few forms.  But, on the man page, there are many, many options listed. 

To use a ping broadcast and find the hosts on the subnet:

```bash
# determine local box IP address and assuming subnet mask 255.255.255.0:
ifconfig

# ping all hosts in range (* = 1-255)
nmap -sP 10.109.16.*

# output will look like this:
Host 10.109.16.141 appears to be up.
...
Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (12 hosts up) scanned in 0.93 seconds
```

For some reason, and if someone knows how to enable this please let me know, my remote box wasn't advertising its hostname, so I wanted to look specifically at the ssh port to see if it was open.  To do this, I used a new option and had to run as root:

```bash
# IP protocol scan, looking at port 22 (default ssh)
sudo nmap -sO 10.109.16.* -p22
```

Note that if you don't include the -p option, this could take some time.  Also, the -sO option is a capital "oh", not a zero.

So, sweet stuff, eh.  Now you can see who else on your network has unsecured ports. :)

I had some fun this morning when the headless box that I'm ssh'ing into to do test app runs randomly changed IP address.  My goal was to find it on the netw

Find network hosts with nmap

Have you ever wanted to map to a remote drive or mount a samba share on Linux?  The commands a really easy, and they're chronicled here.



First, grab Samba:

```bash
sudo apt-get install smbfs
```

Then use smbmount

```bash
sudo smbmount //remote/path/ /local/mount/path/ -o username=[user]
```

Behind -o, you can specify a number of comma-separated options.  To connect to the remote FS that I desired, I just needed the username specified.  Once you execute the smbmount, you may get a "Password:" prompt.  Make sure that you're not hopelessly entering your sudo password, as this is probably the password for the FS.

A good resource for this whole process is <a href="http://www.stevens.edu/itwiki/cgi-bin/wiki/index.php/Linux_Map_a_Network_Drive">on this wiki</a>, or you can do a

```bash
/sbin/mount.cifs --help
```

Have you ever wanted to map to a remote drive or mount a samba share on Linux?  The commands a really easy, and they're chronicled here.

Mount Samba FS on Linux

I wanted to count packets coming back and forth while telnet'ing to test out some different email protocols on our mail server and found this nifty little utility: it's called EtherApe.  Supposedly it's a clone of Etherman, which, if it has clones, probably costs money.  



[EtherApe](http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/jNWdHI8V5W1IIMh1W1NKYw?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_5XZCKcD6--c/SWKJm2hw0wI/AAAAAAAAFzU/F-nxmHF9gvk/s800/Screenshot-EtherApe-1.png)

EtherApe will regularly update (every few seconds) the cloud of endpoints on what I assume is the subnet.  You can see the number of packets in the different protocols that go across the network.  The more packets, the thicker the line.  It was fun to leave up all day.  

To get it, do a:

```bash
sudo apt-get install etherape
```

There will be a few libraries that are dependencies, but I forget which they are.

I wanted to count packets coming back and forth while telnet'ing to test out some different email protocols on our mail server and found this nifty little u

networking