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The use case for this is e.g. a www server that is a separate machine to the mailinabox, but which needs to send emails to the internet - for example it may be running Wordpress or some other web app and need to notify arbitrary users of comments etc. In such cases, as the www administrator is using mailinabox, they're almost certainly better off letting mailinabox do as much as possible as far as email is concerned (as opposed to having the www sibling host do full delivery itself) - among other things this simplifies reasoning about DNS records.
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 be a mail server that the NSA cannot hack.
- Not be customizable by power users.
The long-term goal is to have this be a one-click email appliance with no user-configurable setup options.
For more background, see The Rationale.
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, including SMTP (postfix), IMAP (dovecot), Exchange ActiveSync (z-push), webmail (Roundcube), spam filtering (spamassassin), greylisting (postgrey), CardDAV/CalDAV (ownCloud), DNS, SPF, DKIM (OpenDKIM), DMARC, DNSSEC, DANE TLSA, SSHFP, and basic system services like a firewall, intrusion protection, and setting the system clock.
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.
- 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 and September 2014.