8 ms·

I just put the finishing touches on my ansible playbook for my 'Goodbye Google' server (Mail via dovecot/postfix w/ dkim, dspam, greylist, sieve, Radicale for C

I just put the finishing touches on my ansible playbook for my 'Goodbye Google' server (Mail via dovecot/postfix w/ dkim, dspam, greylist, sieve, Radicale for CardDAV, CalDAV, Prosody for xmpp). Works fine so far. What I'm lacking right now is a decent webmail client. Roundcube isn't exactly my type of thing, mailpile might be interesting. This seems ambitious and interesting in general, but seems to come with too much strings attached (puppet? No, ansible. Comes with postfix? I already have that). So .. it is more than I'd need. I do like the idea of ready-made, easy mail server setups though (obviously, given the first paragraph). Perhaps a project like this could integrate well into owncloud or arkos though?

levosmetalo 13y ago
Care to make that playbook publicly available? I would also be interested to try out hosting my own email, but am somehow afraid of setting it up wrong.
- lazylizard 13y ago
  i found https://github.com/al3x/sovereign/blob/master/README.textile https://github.com/al3x/sovereign/blob/master/README.textile and http://yunohost.org/ http://yunohost.org/ from here actually...personally i also think https://library.linode.com/email/postfix https://library.linode.com/email/postfix is good.
- darklajid 13y ago
  Just pushed my current status to https://github.com/darklajid/ansible-communication Careful though: This isn't deployed outside of test machines yet. I'm still working on the proper backup/restore scenarios, consider a couple improvements etc. - the readme outlines what I would like to do next. Plus: While I self-host my mails for a while (without an automated setup of sorts, the one off snowflake sort of thing, so quite different from this here), I don't claim to be an expert here. Check what I did, take it as a template, don't use it without a basic understanding. If there are some postfix/dovecot gurus out here and would like to point out obvious flaws in my setup - go ahead!
  - ushi 13y ago
    Here is the dovecot documentation for your "auto-create imap folders" issue: http://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxSettings http://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxSettings
- 80j0TL2C 13y ago
  This guide works like a charm, takes about 2-3 hours to setup: https://www.exratione.com/2012/05/a-mailserver-on-ubuntu-1204-postfix-dovecot-mysql/ https://www.exratione.com/2012/05/a-mailserver-on-ubuntu-120...
  - darklajid 13y ago
    I'm pretty sure I followed one of those previously. I wouldn't do that again, though (hence my stumbling around with ansible). If the machine goes down/you want to recreate it or duplicate it for a friend's setup (without dd-ing everything and trying to figure out what to change later) you're back to square one. It's probably month or years after you read the guide that created your system, you don't have the link handy anymore, forgot all you learned about gotchas in the doc that were slightly different for your deployment. These guides aren't bad per se. My current system is a heavily customized result of various "Here's how I do mails" guides as well and it works like a charm, for quite some time. But I could never reproduce it again, which caused my reluctance to jump from GMail as my primary account to the self-hosted one - even if that one works for me, for years. IF all my critical data (password reset mails, banking information etc. etc.) end up on a host I'm responsible for, I want to be able to replace that thing ASAP if something goes wrong. Currently (unfinished, see my link above), but: time ansible-playbook -K -i hosts site.yml real 6m29.708s user 0m9.623s sys 0m3.243s (Most of the time is spent in downloading packages/installing them: Got a faster network? This will be faster as well) That's from a bare bone installation (nothing on there but ssh, my unprivileged user with sudo privileges) to a running mail (smtp/imap), calender/contacts & xmpp server. I don't claim that MY project is the way to go, quite frankly I'd be very uncomfortable to push others to use it. But I do believe that infrastructure that is this essential should be easy to recreate/reproduce, even for laymen/single persons.
Nux 13y ago
Hello, I'm working on a similar thing based on mailboy[1], you might be interested in the admin interface. Achiles heel now for DIY solutions is the web mail. Roundcube, the best candidate, is not really stellar (almost unusable on 1366x768 screens). [1] - http://manurevah.com/blah/en/p/mailboy http://manurevah.com/blah/en/p/mailboy
- nodata 13y ago
  mailbox looks suspiciously like postfixadmin, is it a fork?
bgaluszka 13y ago
I've similar setup on my server (except http://baikal-server.com/ http://baikal-server.com/ for CardDAV/CalDAV and http://www.ejabberd.im/ http://www.ejabberd.im/ for XMPP) and I was wondering if there is a simpler solution to email server for one person than postfix/dovecot/spam handling. I understand complexity of that subject but feels like there could be something that fits "personal server" scenario.
- jackbravo 13y ago
  for a personal server, maybe try http://www.citadel.org/ http://www.citadel.org/. One app that runs email, xmpp, calendar, contacts and notes, written in C++. I've installed just on one machine. The interface is awful, but the rest seems to work pretty well.
hbbio 13y ago
We have been working on such project in our own Opa technology for quite some time. Do you think we should work on an open source solution for https://peps.mlstate.com https://peps.mlstate.com ? The project is a very clean webmail server, starting with our clean protocol implementations (SMTP, POP, IMAP) and does not require external projects. Try with hn/hn... Update: Please don't change the password for this hn account. As an admin, I can reset it, but have better things to do today ;)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- jawr 13y ago
  Very nice interface. Kudos.
  - hbbio 13y ago
    Thanks go to @tweetfr
- shubb 13y ago
  This is pretty cool. Will you do any kind of personal variant for gmail refugees?
  - hbbio 13y ago
    Thanks. Yes, we are thinking about the following business model for PEPS, which was built for an important account but of which we own the IP. 1. Open source under the AGPL license, so that anyone can host its own instance easily and hopefully we can build a community around the product. 2. Sell support (together with a non-AGPL license for corporations). OR 1. Open source under the MIT license the current product. 2. Sell a complete packaged solution with add-ons for corporate users. Any feedback between the two?
    - angersock 13y ago
      Voting for 2...AGPL is like biohazard level 4 viral.
specto 13y ago
Checkout https://github.com/al3x/sovereign https://github.com/al3x/sovereign , though xmpp hasn't been set up yet.
- darklajid 13y ago
  That looks awesome, thanks. You(?) went a lot further than me (and further than I want to go, admittedly). Still, for people looking for a more complete package that looks like a much better alternative. Not for me, because I'm trying to get away with a much smaller machine and less dependencies (i.e. I'm still really unsure if I want a webserver. I decided to go for clucene instead of solr because of the dependencies etc. etc.). I will follow that repository though and think about recommending that to friends/coworkers though, depending on their needs/expectations.
  - specto 13y ago
    I have only contributed a little on the project, most of the work has been done by its main author and others.
- FatalBaboon 13y ago
  I'm very suspicious when MySQL finds its way into an open-source package, due to its ties to Oracle. Why not Postgresql?
  - specto 13y ago
    Actually there's an issue open right now to switch to postgresql
  - oijaf888 13y ago
    Why not MariaDB and then you don't have to worry about fixing third party packages that depend on MySQL specific behavior?
  - pconf 13y ago
    Why would an email client need an RDBMS backend in the first place other than the fact that, like WordPress, the devs did not value KIS? Squirrelmail does fine without a db, as do all of the command line clients.
inoop 13y ago
Have a look at Zarafa (http://www.zarafa.com/ http://www.zarafa.com/). It's free and open source, although Outlook integration is a paid option (via a plug-in). Comes with a modern webapp (http://www.zarafa.com/content/webapp http://www.zarafa.com/content/webapp).
- hugoroy 13y ago
  > It's free and open source, although There's also kolab.org which is completely free software (uses Roundcube for web interface since 3.1).
- samspenc 13y ago
  Zarafa is awesome! Is that a custom web-app? It resembles Outlook; just want to confirm that its actually not.
  - mverwijs 13y ago
    As an ex-zarafa employee I can confirm it is written in-house, from scratch. Uses Extjs. Also see: https://community.zarafa.com/ https://community.zarafa.com/
  - inoop 13y ago
    It's a custom webapp that's modeled after Outlook, hence the resemblance. Try the demo, I'm sure you'll like it ;)
- rufugee 13y ago
  And also...Zimbra (http://www.zimbra.com http://www.zimbra.com). This is what I've used to replace gmail for now, and aside from some quirks, it's working well.
  - Nux 13y ago
    Zimbra is pretty damn nice. A bit resource hungry, but very functional.
- mverwijs 13y ago
jimktrains2 13y ago
Do you have a blog post of everything you've installed and getting them all to work well together? I've been interested in creating my own "Goodbye Google" server, but never get started:(
- darklajid 13y ago
  Not yet, but that _is_ planned. That said: The point of these automated recipes is that you can run them _without_ reading a blog and copy/pasting things in a shell. I do plan to write about my experience. After I set up a blog. cough
dchuk 13y ago
Sort of related: how'd you get started with Ansible? Did you just dive in and hack around or follow some sort of guide or tutorial? I've been looking to get into it but just haven't made a move on it yet...
- hedgehog 13y ago
  I've started using it over the last month. The docs on the web site are good and this hands-on tutorial was also helpful: https://github.com/leucos/ansible-tuto https://github.com/leucos/ansible-tuto I'm actually not sure it's better than the shell scripts it replaced so I may end up switching back.
  - deckiedan 13y ago
    The things I really like about ansible compared to shell scripts is: - jinja2 templating for config files - roles & tags - many error-cases already thought of and coded around.
  - darklajid 13y ago
    I've to disagree about the state of the ansible documentation, I guess. As far as I understand the website was restructured not too long ago and a lot of stuff is .. broken. I fell back to using the Google Site Search thingy to find anything, because ansible's documentation lacks any kind of index/reference (except for the modules page, which is nice). There's a good deal of magic involved, and passages in the documentation even state stuff like 'there are a couple of these magic variables, but not too much' (Note: No list is provided). In general I hate the state of the documentation. It's barely usable. I do like the simplicity of the format (.yml) and the architecture (no agent required, only dependency is python and I think even that can be bootstrapped via python). My playbook (see above) certainly feels like a shell script packaged in .yml format, but .. I stumbled over and over again when I tried using ansible's modules (examples: No way to create postgresql roles without a password, no way to load data into postgresql => Two things I've to do via shell: or command: in my project). Bottom line: I'm happy with the state I have, but I'm far from happy with ansible as a technology and probably wouldn't use it as it is for the next deployment project.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

levosmetalo 13y ago

Care to make that playbook publicly available? I would also be interested to try out hosting my own email, but am somehow afraid of setting it up wrong.

lazylizard 13y ago
i found https://github.com/al3x/sovereign/blob/master/README.textile https://github.com/al3x/sovereign/blob/master/README.textile and http://yunohost.org/ http://yunohost.org/ from here actually...personally i also think https://library.linode.com/email/postfix https://library.linode.com/email/postfix is good.
darklajid 13y ago
Just pushed my current status to https://github.com/darklajid/ansible-communication Careful though: This isn't deployed outside of test machines yet. I'm still working on the proper backup/restore scenarios, consider a couple improvements etc. - the readme outlines what I would like to do next. Plus: While I self-host my mails for a while (without an automated setup of sorts, the one off snowflake sort of thing, so quite different from this here), I don't claim to be an expert here. Check what I did, take it as a template, don't use it without a basic understanding. If there are some postfix/dovecot gurus out here and would like to point out obvious flaws in my setup - go ahead!
- ushi 13y ago
  Here is the dovecot documentation for your "auto-create imap folders" issue: http://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxSettings http://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxSettings
80j0TL2C 13y ago
This guide works like a charm, takes about 2-3 hours to setup: https://www.exratione.com/2012/05/a-mailserver-on-ubuntu-1204-postfix-dovecot-mysql/ https://www.exratione.com/2012/05/a-mailserver-on-ubuntu-120...
- darklajid 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure I followed one of those previously. I wouldn't do that again, though (hence my stumbling around with ansible). If the machine goes down/you want to recreate it or duplicate it for a friend's setup (without dd-ing everything and trying to figure out what to change later) you're back to square one. It's probably month or years after you read the guide that created your system, you don't have the link handy anymore, forgot all you learned about gotchas in the doc that were slightly different for your deployment. These guides aren't bad per se. My current system is a heavily customized result of various "Here's how I do mails" guides as well and it works like a charm, for quite some time. But I could never reproduce it again, which caused my reluctance to jump from GMail as my primary account to the self-hosted one - even if that one works for me, for years. IF all my critical data (password reset mails, banking information etc. etc.) end up on a host I'm responsible for, I want to be able to replace that thing ASAP if something goes wrong. Currently (unfinished, see my link above), but: time ansible-playbook -K -i hosts site.yml real 6m29.708s user 0m9.623s sys 0m3.243s (Most of the time is spent in downloading packages/installing them: Got a faster network? This will be faster as well) That's from a bare bone installation (nothing on there but ssh, my unprivileged user with sudo privileges) to a running mail (smtp/imap), calender/contacts & xmpp server. I don't claim that MY project is the way to go, quite frankly I'd be very uncomfortable to push others to use it. But I do believe that infrastructure that is this essential should be easy to recreate/reproduce, even for laymen/single persons.

Nux 13y ago

Hello, I'm working on a similar thing based on mailboy[1], you might be interested in the admin interface. Achiles heel now for DIY solutions is the web mail. Roundcube, the best candidate, is not really stellar (almost unusable on 1366x768 screens). [1] - http://manurevah.com/blah/en/p/mailboy http://manurevah.com/blah/en/p/mailboy

nodata 13y ago
mailbox looks suspiciously like postfixadmin, is it a fork?

bgaluszka 13y ago

I've similar setup on my server (except http://baikal-server.com/ http://baikal-server.com/ for CardDAV/CalDAV and http://www.ejabberd.im/ http://www.ejabberd.im/ for XMPP) and I was wondering if there is a simpler solution to email server for one person than postfix/dovecot/spam handling. I understand complexity of that subject but feels like there could be something that fits "personal server" scenario.

jackbravo 13y ago
for a personal server, maybe try http://www.citadel.org/ http://www.citadel.org/. One app that runs email, xmpp, calendar, contacts and notes, written in C++. I've installed just on one machine. The interface is awful, but the rest seems to work pretty well.

hbbio 13y ago

We have been working on such project in our own Opa technology for quite some time. Do you think we should work on an open source solution for https://peps.mlstate.com https://peps.mlstate.com ? The project is a very clean webmail server, starting with our clean protocol implementations (SMTP, POP, IMAP) and does not require external projects. Try with hn/hn... Update: Please don't change the password for this hn account. As an admin, I can reset it, but have better things to do today ;)

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jawr 13y ago
Very nice interface. Kudos.
- hbbio 13y ago
  Thanks go to @tweetfr
shubb 13y ago
This is pretty cool. Will you do any kind of personal variant for gmail refugees?
- hbbio 13y ago
  Thanks. Yes, we are thinking about the following business model for PEPS, which was built for an important account but of which we own the IP. 1. Open source under the AGPL license, so that anyone can host its own instance easily and hopefully we can build a community around the product. 2. Sell support (together with a non-AGPL license for corporations). OR 1. Open source under the MIT license the current product. 2. Sell a complete packaged solution with add-ons for corporate users. Any feedback between the two?
  - angersock 13y ago
    Voting for 2...AGPL is like biohazard level 4 viral.

specto 13y ago

Checkout https://github.com/al3x/sovereign https://github.com/al3x/sovereign , though xmpp hasn't been set up yet.

darklajid 13y ago
That looks awesome, thanks. You(?) went a lot further than me (and further than I want to go, admittedly). Still, for people looking for a more complete package that looks like a much better alternative. Not for me, because I'm trying to get away with a much smaller machine and less dependencies (i.e. I'm still really unsure if I want a webserver. I decided to go for clucene instead of solr because of the dependencies etc. etc.). I will follow that repository though and think about recommending that to friends/coworkers though, depending on their needs/expectations.
- specto 13y ago
  I have only contributed a little on the project, most of the work has been done by its main author and others.
FatalBaboon 13y ago
I'm very suspicious when MySQL finds its way into an open-source package, due to its ties to Oracle. Why not Postgresql?
- specto 13y ago
  Actually there's an issue open right now to switch to postgresql
- oijaf888 13y ago
  Why not MariaDB and then you don't have to worry about fixing third party packages that depend on MySQL specific behavior?
- pconf 13y ago
  Why would an email client need an RDBMS backend in the first place other than the fact that, like WordPress, the devs did not value KIS? Squirrelmail does fine without a db, as do all of the command line clients.

inoop 13y ago

Have a look at Zarafa (http://www.zarafa.com/ http://www.zarafa.com/). It's free and open source, although Outlook integration is a paid option (via a plug-in). Comes with a modern webapp (http://www.zarafa.com/content/webapp http://www.zarafa.com/content/webapp).

hugoroy 13y ago
> It's free and open source, although There's also kolab.org which is completely free software (uses Roundcube for web interface since 3.1).
samspenc 13y ago
Zarafa is awesome! Is that a custom web-app? It resembles Outlook; just want to confirm that its actually not.
- mverwijs 13y ago
  As an ex-zarafa employee I can confirm it is written in-house, from scratch. Uses Extjs. Also see: https://community.zarafa.com/ https://community.zarafa.com/
- inoop 13y ago
  It's a custom webapp that's modeled after Outlook, hence the resemblance. Try the demo, I'm sure you'll like it ;)
rufugee 13y ago
And also...Zimbra (http://www.zimbra.com http://www.zimbra.com). This is what I've used to replace gmail for now, and aside from some quirks, it's working well.
- Nux 13y ago
  Zimbra is pretty damn nice. A bit resource hungry, but very functional.
mverwijs 13y ago

jimktrains2 13y ago

Do you have a blog post of everything you've installed and getting them all to work well together? I've been interested in creating my own "Goodbye Google" server, but never get started:(

darklajid 13y ago
Not yet, but that _is_ planned. That said: The point of these automated recipes is that you can run them _without_ reading a blog and copy/pasting things in a shell. I do plan to write about my experience. After I set up a blog. cough

dchuk 13y ago

Sort of related: how'd you get started with Ansible? Did you just dive in and hack around or follow some sort of guide or tutorial? I've been looking to get into it but just haven't made a move on it yet...

hedgehog 13y ago
I've started using it over the last month. The docs on the web site are good and this hands-on tutorial was also helpful: https://github.com/leucos/ansible-tuto https://github.com/leucos/ansible-tuto I'm actually not sure it's better than the shell scripts it replaced so I may end up switching back.
- deckiedan 13y ago
  The things I really like about ansible compared to shell scripts is: - jinja2 templating for config files - roles & tags - many error-cases already thought of and coded around.
- darklajid 13y ago
  I've to disagree about the state of the ansible documentation, I guess. As far as I understand the website was restructured not too long ago and a lot of stuff is .. broken. I fell back to using the Google Site Search thingy to find anything, because ansible's documentation lacks any kind of index/reference (except for the modules page, which is nice). There's a good deal of magic involved, and passages in the documentation even state stuff like 'there are a couple of these magic variables, but not too much' (Note: No list is provided). In general I hate the state of the documentation. It's barely usable. I do like the simplicity of the format (.yml) and the architecture (no agent required, only dependency is python and I think even that can be bootstrapped via python). My playbook (see above) certainly feels like a shell script packaged in .yml format, but .. I stumbled over and over again when I tried using ansible's modules (examples: No way to create postgresql roles without a password, no way to load data into postgresql => Two things I've to do via shell: or command: in my project). Bottom line: I'm happy with the state I have, but I'm far from happy with ansible as a technology and probably wouldn't use it as it is for the next deployment project.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]