mailinabox/README.md

Modifications are go

This is not the original Mail-in-a-Box. See https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox for the real deal! Many thanks to @JoshData and other contributors. I made a number of modifications to the original Mail-in-a-Box, some to fix bugs, some to ease maintenance for my personal installation, to learn and to add functionality.

Functionality changes and additions

• Change installation target to Ubuntu 20.04. Thanks to Power Mail-in-a-Box
• Add geoipblocking on the admin web console This applies geoip filtering on acces to the admin panel of the box. Order of filtering: block continents that are not allowed, block countries that are not allowed, allow countries that are allowed (overriding continent filtering). Edit /etc/nginx/conf.d/10-geoblock.conf to configure.
• Add geoipblocking for ssh access This applies geoip filtering for access to the ssh server. Edit /etc/geoiplookup.conf. All countries defined in this file are allowed. Works for alternate ssh ports.
• Make fail2ban a more strict enable postfix filters, lengthen bantime and findtime
• Add fail2ban jails for both above mentioned geoipblocking filters
• Add fail2ban filters for web scanners and badbots
• Add xapian full text searching to dovecot (from https://github.com/grosjo/fts-xapian)
• Add rkhunter
• Configure domain names for which only www will be hosted. Edit /etc/miabwwwdomains.conf to configure. The box will handle incoming traffic asking for these domain names. The DNS entries are entered in an external DNS provider! If you want this box to handle the DNS entries, simply add a mail alias. (existing functionality of the vanilla Mail-in-a-Box)
• Add some munin plugins
• Update nextcloud to 20.0.8
• Update roundcube carddav plugin to 4.1.1
• Use shorter TTL values in the DNS server. To be used before for example when changing IP addresses. Shortening TTL values will propagate changes faster. For reference, default TTL is 1 day, short TTL is 5 minutes. To use, edit file /etc/forceshortdnsttl and add a line for each domain for which shorter TTLs should be used. To use short TTLs for all known domains, add "forceshortdnsttl"
• Use the box as a Hidden Master in the DNS system Thus only the secondary DNS servers are used as public DNS servers. When using a hidden master, no glue records are necessary at your domain hoster. To use, first setup secondary DNS servers via the Custom DNS administration page. At least two secondary servers should be set. When that functions, edit file /etc/usehiddenmasterdns and add a line for each domain for which Hidden Master should be used. To use Hidden Master for all known domains, add "usehiddenmasterdns".

Bug fixes

• Munin routes are ignored for Multi Factor Authentication see github issue
• Munin error report fixed see github issue
• Correct nextcloud carddav url see github issue

Maintenance (personal)

• Automatically clean spam and trash folders after 120 days
• Removed Z-Push
• After a backup, restarting of services is moved to before the execution of the after-backup script. This enables mail delivery while the after-backup script runs.
• Add weekly pflogsumm log analysis
• Enable mail delivery to root, forwarded to administrator
• Remove nextcloud skeleton to save disk space

Fun

• Add option to define ADMIN_IP_ADDRESS (currently only used to ignore fail2ban jails)
• Add dynamic dns tools in the tools directory.

Original mailinabox content starts here:

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!

---

Our goals are 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.

Additionally, this project has a Code of Conduct, which supersedes the goals above. Please review it when joining our community.

In The Box

Mail-in-a-Box turns a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 or 18.04 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:

• SMTP (postfix), IMAP (Dovecot), CardDAV/CalDAV (Nextcloud), and Exchange ActiveSync (z-push) servers
• Webmail (Roundcube), mail filter rules (thanks to Roundcube and Dovecot), and email client autoconfig settings (served by nginx)
• Spam filtering (spamassassin) and greylisting (postgrey)
• DNS (nsd4) with SPF, DKIM (OpenDKIM), DMARC, DNSSEC, DANE TLSA, MTA-STS, and SSHFP policy records automatically set
• TLS certificates are automatically provisioned using Let's Encrypt for protecting https and all of the other services on the box
• Backups (duplicity), firewall (ufw), intrusion protection (fail2ban), and basic system monitoring (munin)

It also includes system management tools:

• Comprehensive health monitoring that checks each day that services are running, ports are open, TLS certificates are valid, and DNS records are correct
• A control panel for adding/removing mail users, aliases, custom DNS records, configuring backups, etc.
• An API for all of the actions on the control panel

It also supports static website hosting since the box is serving HTTPS anyway. (To serve a website for your domains elsewhere, just add a custom DNS "A" record in you Mail-in-a-Box's control panel to point domains to another server.)

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 18.04 LTS 64-bit machine. On the machine...

Clone this repository and checkout the tag corresponding to the most recent release:

$ git clone https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox
$ cd mailinabox
$ git checkout v0.53a

Begin the installation.

$ sudo setup/start.sh

The installation will install, uninstall, and configure packages to turn the machine into a working, good mail server.

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

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

Note that while we want everything to "just work," we can't control the rest of the Internet. Other mail services might block or spam-filter email sent from your Mail-in-a-Box. This is a challenge faced by everyone who runs their own mail server, with or without Mail-in-a-Box. See our discussion forum for tips about that.

Contributing and Development

Mail-in-a-Box is an open source project. Your contributions and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING to get started.

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, May 2015, and November 2016.
• FastCompany mentioned Mail-in-a-Box a roundup of privacy projects on June 26, 2015.