[clue] Self hosting email in 2015

Wed Sep 30 17:33:06 MDT 2015

It seems like everyone uses Zimbra, because it's super-easy and does
everything.  That means it takes a lot more horsepower than, say, Postfix.
Mine has webmail, LDAP, multiple domains, and most things enabled, and it
needs 2GB RAM.  The downside to easy is that it can seem magical sometimes,
but the upside is that we don't have to care.

I've never done it before, but if "[your] friend" (we totally believe it's
not really you) really just needs the features you listed, it's probably
possible to install just the core, mta, and store packages.  It'd take some
reverse-engineering to configure it, since that's all done through magic
after answering some questions.  Or maybe the Internets know.

Backups:
I have mine on an OpenStack instance, and I just dump the whole thing every
week.  Previously, it was on ProxMox, which did the same thing, on a
schedule.  That required the VM to be stopped briefly, at least if using
the "Backup" functionality of ProxMox.  Stopping's probably not a bad idea,
and I'd definitely recommend a VM of some kind.

I thought that your friend might want to back up individual mailboxes,
which I've never done, but I got by with a li'l help from our Internets.
zmaccts | grep '@' | grep -v never$ | awk '{ print $1 }' | while read i;do
zmmailbox -z -m "$i" getRestUrl "//?fmt=tgz" > /boring/$i.tgz;done

That dumps every user that's ever logged in, then dumps the contents of
their accounts to /boring/username.tgz.  It dumps e-mail as .eml and
.eml.meta files, and it even backs up Briefcase contents.  Arcane!

As far as the community, it's active and well-documented, not that I
participate.

On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 4:28 PM, David L. Willson <DLWillson at thegeek.nu>
wrote:

> I'm fond of it. I've got one server running 7.x and another running 8.x. I
> don't have any commercial servers out any more.
>
> Backups? Oh, yeah... I should do that more than annually. Basically, I
> shut the machine down and rsync the vmdk's to another box.
>
> I am a bad SA.
>
> --
> David L. Willson
> Teacher, Engineer, Evangelist
> RHCE+Satellite CCAH Network+ A+ Linux+ LPIC-1 Ubuntu_CP SUSE_CLA
> Mobile 720-333-LANS(5267)
> http://sofree.us
>
> This is a good time for a r3VOLution.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> I used Zimbra years ago and it was quite nice. I liked that it was all
> standard stuff just glued together. Is their community offering still
> decent? I remember that it couldn't do hot backups when I was using it and
> ended up writing a script to approximate that (hey! It's still in their
> wiki! https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Open_Source_Edition_Backup_Procedure)
> and they were making some questionable business choices regarding open
> source, but then I changed jobs and haven't looked at it since.
>
> QH
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 4:18 PM, David L. Willson <DLWillson at thegeek.nu>
> wrote:
>
>> I like Zimbra, but it has a lot of the things you don't care about, like
>> a web-interface.
>>
>> If I just wanted something basic... I guess I might go back to UW-IMAP
>> and SquirrelMail, but really, I haven't used anything but Zimbra in many
>> years.
>>
>> I'd be happy to add your friend's domain to my basement host for a short
>> time, as long as he's not spamming, and realizes that ... well, it's  a
>> basement host, with all that that entails.
>>
>> --
>> David L. Willson
>> Teacher, Engineer, Evangelist
>> RHCE+Satellite CCAH Network+ A+ Linux+ LPIC-1 Ubuntu_CP SUSE_CLA
>> Mobile 720-333-LANS(5267)
>> http://sofree.us
>>
>> This is a good time for a r3VOLution.
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> > How possible is this?  I've been trying to help a friend who needs to
>> > replace the Mac server he set up in 2003 or so. (And is well
>> > unsupported now, with no upgrade path).
>> >
>> > Despite using multiple guides on the net, getting the software
>> > installed is a pain, the config files always seam to be somewhere
>> > else, and even after finally getting it setup, the server can only
>> > email to itself.
>> > Our most recent attempt was with iRedMail.
>> >
>> > So the time has come to asking you enthusiasts on which expert to pay
>> > to get us setup and once again have a generally ignorable system
>> > that just works.
>> >
>> > He's willing to try hosted email, as a temporary solution, pricing
>> > would be per domain not per user.  Actual volume of email I don't
>> > know at this time.  Local is required, the Denver-Boulder area.
>> >
>> > He needs to be able to add (or I assume remove) users/email addresses
>> > at will, with some type of GUI interface (web okay).
>> > He wants to add an additional domain or two.
>> > SSH access so that backup is an easy "ZFS send" command.  Which is a
>> > preference for FreeBSD over other options.  Although being set as a
>> > cron on the send side is preferred over a cron pull from the backup
>> > location.
>> > Webmail is unnecessary. IMAP is required.
>> > Having the mail server within its own VM making moving it in the
>> > future easier, is a plus.
>> >
>> > We already have a location with port 25 unblocked, that had been
>> > working fine for years until email providers started up-ing their
>> > security near the beginning of the year (and now quota limit
>> > warnings from a nearly-full drive).  He has control over the DNS
>> > records and can move the MX as needed.
>> >
>> > All the above, and I feel I'm missing something obvious.
>> > _______________________________________________
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>
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