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Mail-in-a-Box

Mail-in-a-Box helps individuals take back control of their email by defining a one-click, easy-to-deploy SMTP+everything else server: a mail server in a box.

Please see https://mailinabox.email for the project's website and setup guide!

I am trying to:

Make deploying a good mail server easy.
Promote decentralization, innovation, and privacy on the web.
Have automated, auditable, and idempotent configuration.
Not make a totally unhackable, NSA-proof server.
Not make something customizable by power users.

This setup is what has been powering my own personal email since September 2013.

The Box

Mail-in-a-Box turns a fresh Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit machine into a working mail server by installing and configuring various components.

It is a one-click email appliance (see the setup guide). There are no user-configurable setup options. It "just works".

The components installed are:

SMTP (postfix), IMAP (dovecot), CardDAV/CalDAV (ownCloud), Exchange ActiveSync (z-push)
Webmail (Roundcube), static website hosting (nginx)
Spam filtering (spamassassin), greylisting (postgrey)
DNS (nsd4) with SPF, DKIM (OpenDKIM), DMARC, DNSSEC, DANE TLSA, and SSHFP records automatically set
Firewall (ufw), intrusion protection (fail2ban)
A control panel and API for adding/removing mail users, aliases, custom DNS records, etc. and system monitoring.

For more information on how Mail-in-a-Box handles your privacy, see the security details page.

The Security

See the security guide for more information about the box's security configuration (TLS, password storage, etc).

I sign the release tags on git. To verify that a tag is signed by me, you can perform the following steps:

# Download my PGP key.
$ curl -s https://keybase.io/joshdata/key.asc | gpg --import
gpg: key C10BDD81: public key "Joshua Tauberer <jt@occams.info>" imported

# Clone this repository.
$ git clone https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox
$ cd mailinabox

# Verify the tag.
$ git verify-tag v0.10
gpg: Signature made ..... using RSA key ID C10BDD81
gpg: Good signature from "Joshua Tauberer <jt@occams.info>"
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: 5F4C 0E73 13CC D744 693B  2AEA B920 41F4 C10B DD81

The key ID and fingerprint above should match my Keybase.io key and the fingerprint I publish on my homepage.

The Acknowledgements

This project was inspired in part by the "NSA-proof your email in 2 hours" blog post by Drew Crawford, Sovereign by Alex Payne, and conversations with @shevski, @konklone, and @GregElin.

Mail-in-a-Box is similar to iRedMail and Modoboa.

The History

In 2007 I wrote a relatively popular Mozilla Thunderbird extension that added client-side SPF and DKIM checks to mail to warn users about possible phishing: add-on page, source.
In August 2013 I began Mail-in-a-Box by combining my own mail server configuration with the setup in "NSA-proof your email in 2 hours" and making the setup steps reproducible with bash scripts.
Mail-in-a-Box was a semifinalist in the 2014 Knight News Challenge, but it was not selected as a winner.
Mail-in-a-Box hit the front page of Hacker News in April 2014, September 2014, and May 2015.