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2021-10-11 - setting up an email server

today i set up the basics for an email server. receiving emails works fine, but sending emails doesn't because i'm waiting on a support request from linode to unblock outgoing smtp ports. though i don't have a complete mail setup yet, i'll go over the basics of what i learned.

dns stuff

i use linode to host all my personal stuff, so the first thing i did is check linode docs.

linode mail server doc

i made sure i have a dns a record, mx record, and rdns setup. for just receiving emails, i think only the "a" and "mx" records are needed. i don't actually know that for sure though.

mail server implementations

initially i tried mailcow because the dockerized setup intrigued me. after fiddling with the setup for a while, i realized it isn't for me. one big reason is that mailcow includes a web interface and i'm wanting to install my mail server on the same server that hosts my blog. i also wouldn't use the web interface as i am a very command-line driven person.

mailcow

i looked at some other all-in-one solutions, but ultimately decided to go the separate applications route.

really, an email server only needs one program. the job of this program is to listen on smtp ports and store any emails it receives into files. that's exactly what postfix & opensmtpd do. i went with postfix because it seems more common, but i may switch to opensmtpd one day.

postfix homepage

opensmtpd github

intro to postfix

install for postfix on arch linux is obvious:

there are 2 important files you should configure when setting up postfix:

i think these are all the things i changed from the defaults in /etc/postfix/main.cf:

i got those values from going through the archlinux postfix wiki and maybe from some other sources that i can't remember too.

archlinux postfix wiki

the wiki also talks about the /etc/postfix/aliases file, so you may want to read that too.

archlinux packages postfix as a systemd service, so starting postfix in the background is very simple.

once postfix is running, you can send an email to one of the users on the system or one of the users in the /etc/postfix/aliases file. if your configuration is similar to mine, there are 3 directories i know of that can show you new emails:

you can also send emails with postfix's sendmail command. here is an example usage that includes a subject header:

if you don't have outgoing smtp ports open, you can at least send an email to someone on your own server.

also, mutt works with this postfix setup. so you could technically stop here with a basic mail server setup. just ssh into the server when you want to check you email and open up mutt.

mutt homepage

intro to dovecot

i agree that having to ssh into the email server and use mutt isn't ideal. a better way is to have another server that is meant for email clients like outlook, thunderbird, mutt again, and himalaya. there are 2 protocols i'm aware of that most email clients support. those are pop3 and imap. i'm only going to talk about imap in this section.

microsoft explains pop3 vs imap

dovecot is a server that implements the imap, pop3, and other protocols. this program is kind of like a file retrieval program, but specifically for email related things. unfortunately, the archlinux setup for dovecot is pretty annoying. i'll highlight what to watch out for.

install is easy like always:

but that's where it stops being easy. if you try to start the systemd service, you'll notice that there are no configuration files in the /etc/dovecot directory. For some reason, the package maintainers thought it was a good idea to not automatically put the configuration files into /etc. luckily, the archlinux wiki explains how to populate these configuration files by coping from /usr/share/doc/dovecot/example-config/. i went through the first few sections of the archlinux wiki page including generating the dh parameters too. just make sure you follow the instructions closely.

archlinux dovecot wiki

once dovecot is configured and running (just use systemctl to run it), you can test that it's working in a few ways.

testing dovecot with telnet

connecting to dovecot locally doesn't require encryption, so you can just use telnet. if you can login, then it's probably working fine:

testing dovecot with openssl

imap uses two standard ports. 143 is for non-encrypted traffic. 993 is for imaps, or encrypted ssl traffic. you definitely want external applications to connect encrypted. you can check that the ssl encryption is setup correctly by using openssl. first check that port 993 is accessible from your client computer:

then check for a certificate coming from that port. if there is a BEGIN_CERTIFICATE/END_CERTIFICATE section, that means the server is correctly setup with ssl:

setting up himalaya

himalaya is a pretty new email cli app that's still under heavy development. i haven't use it much yet, but i really like what i've seen so far. so many email and irc clients have tuis that you have to get used to. himalaya has a cli, not a tui, so it's much more scriptable with other commands and easier to use in my opinion.

himalaya github page

it's in the pacman repos, so install is just:

the wiki describes the config file syntax. i noticed that the smtp fields are required, but they can be blank. here is what the "xoc3" portion of my config file looks like:

once i setup the config file, himalaya wouldn't run because the server's certificate was self signed. to get around this, you need to add the certificate to your trusted certificates. i tried using the "openssl trust" command, but it didn't work. in the end, this is what worked for me. i'd love to know if there is a better way to do this:

after that, just run "himalaya list" to see your email inbox!

conclusion

that's everything i wanted to share. here are some other helpful links that i referenced to get everything working and figured out.

a good article on some ssl internals

a much more more advanced self-host guide

a useful gemini post about dovecot