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mailinabox/README.md
Joshua Tauberer 3b6f7250ee v0.13
v0.13 (August 19, 2015)
-----------------------

Mail:

* Outbound mail headers (the Recieved: header) are tweaked to possibly improve deliverability.
* Some MIME messages would hang Roundcube due to a missing package.
* The users permitted to send as an alias can now be different from where an alias forwards to.

DNS:

* The secondary nameservers option in the control panel now accepts more than one nameserver and a special xfr:IP format to specify zone-transfer-only IP addresses.
* A TLSA record is added for HTTPS for DNSSEC-aware clients that support it.

System:

* Backups can now be turned off, or stored in Amazon S3, through new control panel options.
* Munin was not working on machines confused about their hostname.
* ownCloud updated to version 8.1.1, its memcached caching enabled.
* When upgrading, network checks like blocked port 25 are now skipped.
* Tweaks to the intrusion detection rules for IMAP.
* Mail-in-a-Box's setup is a lot quieter, hiding lots of irrelevant messages.

Control panel:

* SSL certificate checks were failing on OVH/OpenVZ servers due to missing /dev/stdin.
* Improve the sort order of the domains in the status checks.
* Some links in the control panel were only working in Chrome.
2015-08-19 16:37:18 -04:00

6.1 KiB

Mail-in-a-Box

By @JoshData and contributors.

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. There are no user-configurable setup options. It "just works".

The components installed are:

It also includes:

  • A control panel and API for adding/removing mail users, aliases, custom DNS records, etc. and detailed system monitoring.
  • Our own builds of postgrey (adding better whitelisting) and dovecot-lucene (faster search for mail) distributed via the Mail-in-a-Box PPA on Launchpad.

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

Installation

See the setup guide for detailed, user-friendly instructions.

For experts, start with a completely fresh (really, I mean it) Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit machine. On the machine...

Clone this repository:

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

Optional: Download my PGP key and then verify that the sources were signed by me. You'll get a lot of warnings, but the fingerprint should match the fingerprint in the key details at https://keybase.io/joshdata and on my personal homepage. (Of course, if this repository has been compromised you can't trust these instructions anyway.)

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

$ git verify-tag v0.13
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

Checkout the tag corresponding to the most recent release:

$ git checkout v0.13

Begin the installation.

$ sudo setup/start.sh

For help, DO NOT contact me directly --- I don't do tech support by email or tweet (no exceptions).

Post your question on the discussion forum instead, where me and other Mail-in-a-Box users may be able to help you.

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.
  • FastCompany mentioned Mail-in-a-Box a roundup of privacy projects on June 26, 2015.