Meta UI: Am I out of my mind?

I'm considering volunteering[1] to set up a mail server for a friend.
I'm not concerned about the technical details, and this froup would be
the wrong venue to ask if I were, so please don't tell me that S
sucks, E is egregious or P is putrescent. However, I'm interested in
your thoughts about the non-technical aspects, and any sad sagas from
those who have done something similar[2][3].

The issues that I'm concerned about include making clear what I will
and won't do and sticking to limits once I've imposed them. He's a
programmer, but basically knows nothing about SMTP or TCP/IP. I'm not
sure whether to try training him to maintain things himself, or
whether it would be less work to have him treat it as a black box once
I set it up. And, no, my people skills are not as good as I might
like.

Am I out of my mind for considering it?

[1] The Cadre must think that I'm dense, never having learned that
critical Army mantra, "Never volunteer!"

[2] That is, setting up a server in a context that is not job
related.

[3] I understand that you might have to mention some technical
details as background, but what I'm looking for is people
issues.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <http://patriot.net/~shmuel> ISO position
Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+bspfh to contact me.
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Meta UI: Am I out of my mind?
    ... Get a better mail server :-) ... Or completely fail to care about any user who doesn't back up their own ... goddamn mail. ...
    (alt.sysadmin.recovery)