Advice requested for setting up a Home mail server...

Hi,
I'm looking for some advice on what to use setting up a mail server at
home.

I'll list what I know and what I want to work with first, and then ask
the questions.

The box is an x86_64 system running Solaris 10.
The MTA is postfix.
I will use fetchmail to pull mail from my ISP and gmail.
I will use fetchmail+hotwayd to pull mail from hotmail.
I may use ASSP as an smtp proxy for the domain (fetchmail will bypass
this and deliver straight to postfix).

So, here are the questions:

What IMAP server should I use? Here's the list of requirements:
Free and Open Source.
Portable.
Must have sub-folders that can also contain mail.
Low administrative overhead. I don't want to have to jump through
hoops when I create a new user, they should just receive mail.
"Singular" mail box location. By this I mean that there is only
a single location where mail is stored, either on a per-user or
global basis. So to back up all users mail i can do
something like:
"tar -cvf backup.tar /MailBoxes"
or
"tar -cvf backup.tar /home/*/MailBoxes".
Works with procmail, or equivalent.
Please let it be well-documented. Failing that, have a good
mailing list or similar.
Not too much mucking around to set up. I'm lazy!

What WebMail should I use? Obvious requirement is that it should work
with the recommended IMAP server.

Is there anything that I've forgotten or missed? Or gotten *completely*
wrong?

Cheers,
Gary B-)

Re: Advice requested for setting up a Home mail server...

"Gary R. Schmidt" writes:

> I'll list what I know and what I want to work with first, and then ask
> the questions.
>
> The box is an x86_64 system running Solaris 10.
> The MTA is postfix.
> I will use fetchmail to pull mail from my ISP and gmail.
> I will use fetchmail+hotwayd to pull mail from hotmail.

Why are you using fetchmail? Is mail going to be delivered to this
machine or not?

If I were you I'd be leaving fetchmail out until everything else is
set up. Fetchmail is really a user app, and not something a mail
server does. It doesn't even need to be run on a mail server, really.

> I may use ASSP as an smtp proxy for the domain (fetchmail will bypass
> this and deliver straight to postfix).

Why? The anti-spam provisions in postfix not enough for you?

> So, here are the questions:
>
> What IMAP server should I use? Here's the list of requirements:
> Free and Open Source.
> Portable.
> Must have sub-folders that can also contain mail.
> Low administrative overhead. I don't want to have to jump through
> hoops when I create a new user, they should just receive mail.

This might cut out Cyrus as an option.

> "Singular" mail box location. By this I mean that there is only
> a single location where mail is stored, either on a per-user or
> global basis. So to back up all users mail i can do
> something like:
> "tar -cvf backup.tar /MailBoxes"
> or
> "tar -cvf backup.tar /home/*/MailBoxes".

If you're happy with "tar -cf backup.tar /home" then I would recommend
uw-imap.

> Works with procmail, or equivalent.

uw-imap comes with dmail, which can be used from procmail to deliver
to folders.

> What WebMail should I use? Obvious requirement is that it should work
> with the recommended IMAP server.

Squirrelmail works well enough if you don't mind PHP. I imagine Alpine
is good but I haven't tried it myself. You may also like to check out
Prayer
http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/~dpc22/prayer/

> Is there anything that I've forgotten or missed? Or gotten *completely*
> wrong?

Keep in mind that postfix, the IMAP server, and webmail don't need to
be on the same machine; they can be on three completely different
machines. I would recommend keeping webmail separate, actually. Web
servers are annoying.

Anyway, make sure you keep all these facilities separate in your mind,
at least. Fetchmail is a fourth and really separate facility too, even
though it will deliver to postfix. Procmail is separate again, even
though it sounds like you'll be putting it in between postfix and your
IMAP folders (why are you doing that, by the way?).

Cheers,

- Joel

Re: Advice requested for setting up a Home mail server...

Joel Reicher wrote:

> "Gary R. Schmidt" writes:
>
>
>>I'll list what I know and what I want to work with first, and then ask
>>the questions.
>>
>> The box is an x86_64 system running Solaris 10.
>> The MTA is postfix.
>> I will use fetchmail to pull mail from my ISP and gmail.
>> I will use fetchmail+hotwayd to pull mail from hotmail.
>
>
> Why are you using fetchmail? Is mail going to be delivered to this
> machine or not?
To pull mail from my ISP, and gmail, and hotmail, as I said.

Yes, mail will *also* be delivered directly to the machine.

> If I were you I'd be leaving fetchmail out until everything else is
> set up. Fetchmail is really a user app, and not something a mail
> server does. It doesn't even need to be run on a mail server, really.
It's already set up and working. No doubt I will have to disable it
while I get everything switched over.

>> I may use ASSP as an smtp proxy for the domain (fetchmail will bypass
>> this and deliver straight to postfix).
>
>
> Why? The anti-spam provisions in postfix not enough for you?
From my reading ASSP will stop the connections, not just the
deliveries. As I said, I'm thinking about using it.

>>So, here are the questions:
>>
>>What IMAP server should I use? Here's the list of requirements:
>> Free and Open Source.
>> Portable.
>> Must have sub-folders that can also contain mail.
>> Low administrative overhead. I don't want to have to jump through
>> hoops when I create a new user, they should just receive mail.
>
>
> This might cut out Cyrus as an option.
Okay.

>> "Singular" mail box location. By this I mean that there is only
>> a single location where mail is stored, either on a per-user or
>> global basis. So to back up all users mail i can do
>> something like:
>> "tar -cvf backup.tar /MailBoxes"
>> or
>> "tar -cvf backup.tar /home/*/MailBoxes".
>
>
> If you're happy with "tar -cf backup.tar /home" then I would recommend
> uw-imap.
No, I'm not happy with "tar ... /home", I want to be able to backup the
mail on its own. My home is about 34Gig at the moment, my mail (on a
peecee) is ~1Gig.

>> Works with procmail, or equivalent.
>
>
> uw-imap comes with dmail, which can be used from procmail to deliver
> to folders.
Okay.

>>What WebMail should I use? Obvious requirement is that it should work
>> with the recommended IMAP server.
>
>
> Squirrelmail works well enough if you don't mind PHP. I imagine Alpine
> is good but I haven't tried it myself. You may also like to check out
> Prayer
> http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/~dpc22/prayer/
Okay, some more to research.

>>Is there anything that I've forgotten or missed? Or gotten *completely*
>>wrong?
>
>
> Keep in mind that postfix, the IMAP server, and webmail don't need to
> be on the same machine; they can be on three completely different
> machines. I would recommend keeping webmail separate, actually. Web
> servers are annoying.
It's a *home* system. Therefore it will be on a single machine. (I am
well aware that they could be done separately, however.)

> Anyway, make sure you keep all these facilities separate in your mind,
> at least. Fetchmail is a fourth and really separate facility too, even
> though it will deliver to postfix. Procmail is separate again, even
> though it sounds like you'll be putting it in between postfix and your
> IMAP folders (why are you doing that, by the way?).
Because that's how procmail works, isn't it?

Cheers,
Gary B-)

--
____________________________________________________________ __________________
Armful of chairs: Something some people would not know
whether you were up them with or not
- Barry Humphries

Re: Advice requested for setting up a Home mail server...

On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, Joel Reicher wrote:
>> Must have sub-folders that can also contain mail.
> If you're happy with "tar -cf backup.tar /home" then I would recommend
> uw-imap.

One thing that's important, given the stated requirements, is to note that
UW imapd's default mailbox format is traditional UNIX mailbox format.
That format does NOT support so-called "dual-use mailboxes" (a mailbox
which contains both messages and other mailboxes). So you need to change
this default. Fortunately, this is relatively straightforward to do.

There are other dual-use mailbox options for UW imapd, but the recommended
one is the "mix" format which was introduced in the imap-2006 series.
It's *much* higher performance than the other options, and is now the
official UW imapd recommended format.

An introduction on how to change the default format is here:
http://www.washington.edu/imap/IMAP-FAQs/index.html#4.5

That FAQ item discusses "mbx" format, which was a non dual-use format that
was formerly the "official UW imapd recommended format" and was introduced
c.1995. However, most of the information there is valid for "mix" if you
substitute "mix" for "mbx".

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Re: Advice requested for setting up a Home mail server...

On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, Gary R. Schmidt wrote:

GRS> Hi,
GRS> I'm looking for some advice on what to use setting up a mail server at
GRS> home.
GRS>

I use imapd, which a grep of strings shows it is from the University of
Washington. It comes with the Pine distribution I think. I seem to
remember that in the couple of places I've installed it under Linux
(Slackware), I've just switched it on in inetd.conf

imap2 stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd imapd

I use it with Pine, either directly on the server or via ssh from my Mac
laptop, with the Mail application on my Mac and with Squirrelmail. My
users - me, wife, son just have login accounts and mail goes into
/var/spool/mail/person and I filter my mailing lists, probably-spam etc
into ~/mail/ using procmail. The only problem I have had is with
connecting my Palm handheld via mobile phone - it looks for subfolders
under /home/alan/ rather than /home/alan/mail/ but I suspect this is a
problem with the Palm application.

Squirrel mail is for webmail http://www.squirrelmail.org/ and is quite
configurable and friendly to use. Should you be interested, this is
what my login page looks like: http://webmail.clifford.ac/

I run my own mailserver running sendmail so don't really use fetchmail
much - it pops a legacy isp account that is still running from dial-up
days and a couple of accounts related to the mobile 'phones

My wife actually pops her mail down to her laptop, so the pop server is
running as well.

As remote access is usually via ssh login, (or I have done it via
redirected ports via a ssh tunnel that worked well) or via Squirrel mail
on the server, there is no problem with outgoing smtp. But I also run a
pop/imap before smtp "milter" with sendmail so I can use the mail
application on the mac laptop if neccessary.

--
Alan

( If replying by mail, please note that all "sardines" are canned.
However, unless this a very old message, a "tuna" will swim right
through. )

Re: Advice requested for setting up a Home mail server...

Gary R. Schmidt wrote:

> What IMAP server should I use? Here's the list of requirements:
> Free and Open Source.
> Portable.
> Must have sub-folders that can also contain mail.
> Low administrative overhead.

The "Low administrative overhead" eliminates Cyrus. As others have
mentioned, UW-IMAP will probably fit the bill. I also happen to like
Dovecot, although its support for sub-folders-that-can-also-contain-mail
is listed as experimental.

[...]

> What WebMail should I use? Obvious requirement is that it should work
> with the recommended IMAP server.

I like Squirrel Mail. Very easy to set up.

Regards,

David.

Dovecot: http://www.dovecot.org
Squirrel Mail: http://www.squirrelmail.org
UW IMAP: http://www.washington.edu/imap/

Re: Advice requested for setting up a Home mail server...

On Jun 18, 11:49 pm, "Gary R. Schmidt" wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm looking for some advice on what to use setting up a mail server at
> home.
>
> I'll list what I know and what I want to work with first, and then ask
> the questions.
>
> The box is an x86_64 system running Solaris 10.
> The MTA is postfix.
> I will use fetchmail to pull mail from my ISP and gmail.
> I will use fetchmail+hotwayd to pull mail from hotmail.
> I may use ASSP as an smtp proxy for the domain (fetchmail will bypass
> this and deliver straight to postfix).
>
> So, here are the questions:
>
> What IMAP server should I use? Here's the list of requirements:
> Free and Open Source.
> Portable.
UW-IMAP is a great choice. Also Cyrus though perhaps a bit more than
really necessary for what you want.

> Must have sub-folders that can also contain mail.
Use the "mix" format with UW. Cyrus has this by default. UW-IMAP
must be slightly modified to use "mix" as the default format. I must
say that of all open source software I've used UW-IMAP's compile
routine is among the simplest and fastest since it doesn't bother with
autoconfig stuff. I miss the days of such quick easy compiles. In
any case it is very easy to modify for "mix" format - just simple edit
in a makefile.

> Low administrative overhead. I don't want to have to jump through
> hoops when I create a new user, they should just receive mail.
Since UW-IMAP uses the same users as defined on the OS, no additional
setup is necessary - as long as creating home directories is part of
your user creation, which it usually is on most UNIX like OS's.

> "Singular" mail box location. By this I mean that there is only
> a single location where mail is stored, either on a per-user or
> global basis. So to back up all users mail i can do
> something like:
> "tar -cvf backup.tar /MailBoxes"
> or
> "tar -cvf backup.tar /home/*/MailBoxes".
Again, a simple edit in a single sourcefile for UW-IMAP will create
all user mailboxes under a particular subdirectory of their home
directory. In the case of Cyrus, while all mail messages for all
users exist under a single directory tree (usually /var/spool/imap),
there are a few additional database directories that are needed
(usually under /var/imap) for a proper backup.

> Works with procmail, or equivalent.
Just about anything can be made to work with procmail though I don't
really see the need for it these days. Never could get a handle on
the syntax.

> Please let it be well-documented. Failing that, have a good
> mailing list or similar.
UW is quite well documented, as is Cyrus. Mark Crispin (author of UW)
is especially willing to respond to questions and requests of his
software in my experience.

> Not too much mucking around to set up. I'm lazy!
UW requires (x)inetd to startup, while Cyrus requires a bit of work
creating directory structures, permissions, a cyrus user, and a
startup script - though these are all often done by package managers.

>
> What WebMail should I use? Obvious requirement is that it should work
> with the recommended IMAP server.
Simplest to setup for me was Prayer, though I didn't much care for
it's interface. Squirrelmail isn't too difficult though requires
significantly more work to get going than does UW-IMAP for instance -
apache, php are dependencies and must be configured properly. IMP is
an option but is even more dificult to setup I think.

>
> Is there anything that I've forgotten or missed? Or gotten *completely*
> wrong?
Just make sure you get Postfix, IMAP, Webmail/Fetchmail configured in
that order. You'll save yourself a bit of troubleshooting by doing
so. Be sure to test each component as you go along. Good Luck.

Aaron L. Carlow

Re: Advice requested for setting up a Home mail server...

"Gary R. Schmidt" writes:

> >> The MTA is postfix.
> >> I will use fetchmail to pull mail from my ISP and gmail.
> >> I will use fetchmail+hotwayd to pull mail from hotmail.
> > Why are you using fetchmail? Is mail going to be delivered to this
> > machine or not?
> To pull mail from my ISP, and gmail, and hotmail, as I said.
>
> Yes, mail will *also* be delivered directly to the machine.

In that case it's just users running fetchmail, isn't it? I thought
you were making fetchmail a part of the general "mail server"
setup. If I understand you correctly now you will also be using this
machine from a shell, and running fetchmail as a "normal user".

> > If I were you I'd be leaving fetchmail out until everything else is
> > set up. Fetchmail is really a user app, and not something a mail
> > server does. It doesn't even need to be run on a mail server, really.
> It's already set up and working. No doubt I will have to disable it
> while I get everything switched over.

Probably, yes. Fetchmail has nothing to do with any part of what
you're trying to setup, AFAICT. Delivering to a local mail daemon is
what enables it to be completely separate.

But perhaps I still misunderstand your setup...

> >> I may use ASSP as an smtp proxy for the domain (fetchmail will bypass
> >> this and deliver straight to postfix).
> > Why? The anti-spam provisions in postfix not enough for you?
> From my reading ASSP will stop the connections, not just the
> deliveries. As I said, I'm thinking about using it.

There's no value in "stopping connections", IMHO. If you're worried
about a DDOS attack on the SMTP port or some such you're going to need
more than an anti-spam filter to cope with it. On the other hand, if
you can cope with all the incoming packets I think it's much easier to
reject during the SMTP exchange based on a DNSBL, greylisting, etc.

> >> "Singular" mail box location. By this I mean that there is only
> >> a single location where mail is stored, either on a per-user or
> >> global basis. So to back up all users mail i can do
> >> something like:
> >> "tar -cvf backup.tar /MailBoxes"
> >> or
> >> "tar -cvf backup.tar /home/*/MailBoxes".
> > If you're happy with "tar -cf backup.tar /home" then I would
> > recommend
> > uw-imap.
> No, I'm not happy with "tar ... /home", I want to be able to backup
> the mail on its own. My home is about 34Gig at the moment, my mail
> (on a peecee) is ~1Gig.

I probably should have mentioned that you can configure uw-imap to use
a subdir beneath ~/ as the mail store. This might suit you.

> > Anyway, make sure you keep all these facilities separate in your mind,
> > at least. Fetchmail is a fourth and really separate facility too, even
> > though it will deliver to postfix. Procmail is separate again, even
> > though it sounds like you'll be putting it in between postfix and your
> > IMAP folders (why are you doing that, by the way?).
> Because that's how procmail works, isn't it?

Not quite what I meant. I'm more questioning whether you really need
procmail at all; I'm a big believer in making systems as simple as
possible.

For example, if you only need procmail for the mail that fetchmail is
fetching, then you could fetch the mail and send it to procmail
instead of to postfix, and not put procmail in between postfix and
your IMAP folders at all.

But then again I didn't realise you were using this "mail server" from
a shell too.

Cheers,

- Joel