So.. it seems the say to filter and save mail to different folders in
the way I was with Procmail, is a Dovecot plugin called Pigeonhole
(https://wiki.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/), which happens to be configurable
in the Sieve language. Integration was pretty trivial, as was
translating Procmail's configuration language to Sieve. My one
disappointment is that procmail's configuration was procedural, like a
script. That allowed you to do things like, change debugging levels for
sections of the script you are working on. With Pigeonhole debugging
level is global, making it hard to debug one particular part.
Spam and antivirus was a little harder. I'm using Amavis, which is kind
of a meta tool that passes mail through other filters, like clamav and
spamassassin. I'm still getting errors from that process I haven't
looked into yet. And I also haven't found how to train spamassassin on
spam it missed yet in a way that doesn't require ssh access to the
server (so my wife can do it too).
Next is installing groupware. My current server has a VERY old version
of Owncloud, which is now Nextcloud. Their software doesn't seem to be
able to do some very basic things, like schedule a calendar event based
on the third Wednesday of each month. My forum posts have not been
answered. I am strongly considering Horde, and will probably try that
out this weekend. I need shared calendaring, address book, webmail,
CalDav server, and CardDav server at the very least.
I will also move over my wordpress site too, but that's all up to date
software so it should be lift and shift.
On 06/23/2018 02:45 PM, David Kramer wrote:
Update: Mostly successful! I set up postfix and dovecot using MySQL
for the virtual users and domains, using a domain name I wasn't using
for anything else (bostongeeks.net), as a test.
Most of the details I followed were from
https://www.linode.com/docs/email/postfix/email-with-postfix-dovecot-and-mysql/
with higher level details coming from
https://www.linode.com/docs/email/running-a-mail-server/. Also
followed their pages for securing the server, and [tried to] follow
their directions for installing the certs. Here are some interesting
things I ran into:
Installing mysql-server no longer prompts you for a root password on
install. it does this crazy thing where if you run mysql/mysqladmin
as root, it lets you in without a password. Even if you set the root
password, you can't get into mysql as root unless you're logged in as
root, and then it ignores the password. In the mysql.user table, the
record for root has a plugin of auth_socket instead of
mysql_native_password. I added a new record and then it worked.
Another mysql problem I ran into is some of the configuration (from
the default files and the directions above) use localhost, and some
use 127.0.0.1. It pains me that this is still a problem in 2018. So
I had to add another user record so both would work.
With respect to the certs, it went easier than I thought, but part of
the confusion is different systems call the cert and key files
different things with different extensions. A lot of mail
documentation talks about pem files, but I had a crt file and a key
file. After some searching I found a page
<https://stackoverflow.com/questions/991758/how-to-get-pem-file-from-key-and-crt-file>
that explained that pem is kind of a format, and crt files are often
also pem files and how to tell if yours is. Mine was, so rock and roll.
Dovecot is the strong, silent type. It hardly ever tells you when
it's unhappy and why, and will die with no messages. And worse, it
spits out messages like "dovecot: auth: Error: auth worker: Aborted
PASSV request for [email protected]: Shutting down", when it's not
actually shutting down. Google says "Oh everybody gets that, ignore
it." I was pretty unhappy about that.
OK, here was the most fun. This one is more particular to my system
than helpful to others, but it could be entertaining. When I got
everything together, and ran a test sending an email from my desktop
machine as [email protected] to [email protected], and got
"RCPT TO failed: : Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual
mailbox table"> I double checked and the virtual domain and virtual
user were set up correctly. Lots of googling on this one, and I
finally figured out the problem wasn't the new server at all, but my
current mail server, which was still set up to get mail for
bostongeeks.net but had no users for it. This was hard to track down
because there were so many machines involved that are running postfix
and could have been the origin of that message: My desktop server, my
home mail server, my old Linode node mail server, and the new Linode
node mail server. This also took a while to diagnose because I
suspected that was the problem, but I grepped all of /etc on that
server for bostongeeks.net and found nothing, but that's because it
was in the database. I deleted that virtual domain and it all worked.
Thank you all for your advice. I'm hopeful I will be able to fully
switch over very shortly. I still have some things to work on which I
will post in a separate email.
On 06/20/2018 04:26 AM, David Kramer wrote:
Quick version of my situation:
- I ran my own mail server at home for a long time, and it was good.
- When I moved from Comcast Business (static IP) to FiOS years ago,
things got complicated both because of dynamic IP address, and
because about that time lots of sites started cracking down on SSL
certs and reverse DNS entries and whatnot, Yahoo and others started
rejecting a lot of mail that was accepted in the past, etc. Lots of
mail would not go through.
- I got a Linode server, and tried to set up a mail server for it and
failed. I reached out for help here and it didn't work out. The
directions for setting up postfix/dovecot/procmail/spamassassin/certs
was incredibly long and complicated, and I'm not a SysAdmin, so I
never got a full working solution.
- I ended up with the crazy system I have now, where incoming email
goes to my server still running at home. Outgoing mail goes out my
server at home and smart relayed through the linode server
(postfix/dovecot/procmail) so it has a consistent IP address and real
SSL certificates I bought from GoDaddy. This... mostly works, but my
email still can't get send mail to some people. Worse, I can't send
mail to my family to their @thekramers.net domain name because the
Linode server won't send them to my server at home.
- I am totally fed up with this brokenness, and from running an
ancient server at home, and want to fix this right. Also my certs
are expiring and I'm getting new ones, so I need to do change things
anyway. DNS changes are a hassle, as are power outages.
My main motivations for running my own mail server is that I rely
heavily on procmail rules to deliver mail to the right folders, and I
am also not crazy about third parties scanning and storing all my
mail, though that's negotiable. The idea solution as I currently see
it is all mail going through my Linode server, which would be for
both incoming, outgoing, filtering, webmail of some sort, oh and
CalDav and CardDav. And move my web server there too eventually. If I
can move my super old Owncloud to Nextcloud on the linode server
too. I will probably start with
https://www.linode.com/docs/email/running-a-mail-server/
My main fear in all of this is that I will try to set everything up
and it will go wrong, and my mail will bounce, possibly for days,
while I am job hunting. So I need to go about this carefully. I'm
willing to start from scratch on the Linode server. incoming mail
will go to my home server until I change MX records so at least that
part has some leeway.
Questions:
- Are there any other solutions to my end goal (privacy and control
over mail routing to mailboxes) that I'm missing, other than running
my own mail server? Some other mail platform I can trust and also set
up very complex routing rules with? GMail and Office365 are right
out on general privacy and trust principles, and client-side
filtering is not an option because I read my email on 4+ devices.
- Are Postfix/Dovecot/procmail the best tools for me, and worth the
insane configuration process?
- I've asked here before if anyone was willing to help me, for free
or for money (no I can't pay $50 an hour but I can pay). Given that
failure means my mail won't work, relying on asking questions on
mailing lists if I run into trouble is problematic.
- Right now I have mbox, some of them pretty huge. I have to assume
there will be a way of moving my mail over from my home server to the
new server in maildir format, since that is newer and much better. So
I need to get the server working then I can worry about copying over
the old mail later.
Thanks in advance. and sorry about the long email. I like to give all
the details to cut down on the back and forth and wrong paths so I'm
not wasting others time as much.
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