Self-Hosting Websites, Email?

[Quantum]

I am sick and tired of all the cheesy web hosting companies with downtime, or going belly-up with zero notice, or having their main IP gray-listed for spamming. It's time I self-hosted my websites and email.

I made a first attempt at this by setting to my domain registrar's DNS and redirecting from them to my Queerwire dynamic IP, but after 36 hours I was still not resolving. I checked the DNS root server and my IP was there... it just was not completing resolution for some reason.

I also tried to set up my mailserver by following the Debian manual for Exim, but soon discovered that Exim is -not- all there is to it. I ended up using a HowTo on howtoforge to also set up Cyrus, SpamAssassin, etc, but when I came to a crucial juncture the Cyrus driver was not loading into Exim, or someutt. No idea what was wrong.

So after 4 days of my 4 business websites being down I crapped out and went with Maxiehost as hoster, only to discover after a few days that 80% of my emails were being held and not delivered, for a graylisted IP. So I fired them and went with 2IP. After 12 hours I am still not getting resolution of my domains, and I still think it is time to self-host.

Has anyone done this with a dynamic IP? I know it's not good, but my IP changes not often due to DHCP caching, and also a static IP is expen$ive.

Any idea why after 36 hours I was still not getting resolution? Any suggestions for a HowTo on setting up a -complete- email system?

[Quantum]

OoooKay...