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Email Server

available since: STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

About the Email Server

You only achieve full privacy if you trust the whole communication chain end-to-end. With this Email Server you can:

FreedomBox Email Server can be currently used via IMAP clients and provides both spam and antivirus filtering features.

Unlike other apps in FreedomBox this custom application integrates many Debian packages and quite a lot of glue code to make them all work together for a complete, secure, maintainable solution.

Installing

First of all you need to go to the Apps menu.

If already installed, the Email Server will be shown above the Disabled line. This is likely not your case, but if it is, that means that the Email Server is already installed, so this chapter isn't for you and you ought to jump to the next one.

If the Email Server is shown among the icons below the Disabled line, it is either not yet installed or it is currently disabled. This is the usual starting status.

Select the Email Server app. You are presented with the Email Server app page. If not installed yet you'll be shown the Install button. Click on it!

This is due to other email server present (usually exim4)

This will trigger the installation process.

After installing all needed software packages, configuring them, etc FreedomBox will tell you that the installation is successful and the app page will show additional content like the port information and several feature configuration forms organized by means of tabs.

Next time you go to the Apps Menu it will show the Email Server enabled (above the disabled line).

Configuring the Email Server

  1. Log into FreedomBox web interface as an admin. Server configuration forms are hidden to regular users.

  2. Go to Email Server app.

  3. The minimal configuration needed is at the Domains tab.

  4. Edit the variables as shown in the snapshot below.
  5. Click Update

    Domains tab at Email Server app page

Now as admin you can:

Once some admin has created a home folder for you, you could start sending and getting email within your local network using IMAP-enabled email clients.

Once an admin has set up ?RoundCube configuration for it to work with the FreedomBox Email server you can log into ?RoundCube and start sending emails to your fellow FreedomBox users withiut the need for other email clients.

Additional configurations in your FreedomBox and in your domain name registry are needed to meet current security standards. For the moment USE THIS SERVER ONLY FOR INTERNAL EMAILS (among FreedomBox users within the same machine) or in controlled testing environments. Attempts of sending e-mail to regular services will likely cause your IP to be blacklisted due to unmet security measures.

Using the Email Server (Configuring the clients)

Warning:

This app is still under construction. USE THIS SERVER ONLY FOR INTERNAL EMAILS (among FreedomBox users within the same machine) or in controlled testing environments. Attempts of sending e-mail to regular services will likely cause your IP to be blacklisted due to unmet security measures.

With FreedomBox Webmail Client (RoundCube)

RoundCube email client is provided by FreedomBox so once both are installed, you can host a complete webmail setup for you and your friends.

The following ought to be solved out of the box fairly soon, but currently we still need to tweek a text-file (/etc/roundcube/config.inc.php) to make it work with FreedomBox as email server. The file is restricted so you need to access it as admin user. Fix these settings:

$config['default_host'] = 'ssl://freedombox';
$config['smtp_server'] = 'ssl://freedombox';
$config['smtp_port'] = 465;

Notes:

Troubleshooting

How to debug an action script failure? How to access the system log?

Open a secure shell connection to your FreedomBox. Type sudo journalctl -b -o short-monotonic --no-pager

Why does the server say "relay access denied"?

This is because Postfix was not aware of the email domain. To add an email domain,

Technical info and feedback discussion

There are drafts for a video and its slides for a technical presentation at Debconf21.

This salsa issue is driving the implementation. Feel free to join discussions and provide technical ideas.

Providing user feedback

Please provide your feedback on usage on this forum thread.

Back to Features introduction or manual pages.


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