Hey all,
I have given up hope of hosting my own mail server but was hoping for one that would serve as an archive -
- downloads new emails via IMAP from my mail provider on a regular basis
- allows my mail clients to connect via IMAP to view and search emails
Any suggestions for a docker solution for this?
Thanks
This sounds like what I want. Did you make it work or are you still working on your PhD dissertation to qualify for email server setup training like me? 😕
I think imapsync will fulfill your needs.
https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver should be able to do it.
if i remember this in 6 weeks i’ll check the setup at work.
allows my mail clients to connect via IMAP to view and search emails
dovecot will be able to handle this part. This is what I use as a mail archive (once a year, archive all mail from the previous year from various mailboxes to my self-hosted dovecot instance). I wrote this ansible role for it.
downloads new emails via IMAP
As others recommended,
imapsync
should be able to handle that part.docker solution
These tools are simple enough to install and manage (one package, one config file), Docker is not needed. If you really need it to fit into your docker-based setup, build and maintain your own images.
Piggybacking on this question: any solution that provides really good indexing on those local mails, for fast wildcard searching?
I can’t give direct experience here, but this is exactly the use case I’ve been meaning to spin up mailpiler for: https://www.mailpiler.org/. One of these days that will rise to the top of the priority list.
Notmuch indexes and lets you tag things. You usually integrate it with emacs as the front end but its usable on it’s own.
I use dovecot for this. And thunderbird to actually move/archive the emails. I use caddy for many of my services, so I have pointed dovecot to caddys certificates (for “my.domain”), since it manages certificates through let’s encrypt. I had a plan to install postfix for sending internal emails from my self-hosted services, but it seemed like a bit of configuration and I got busy with other stuff
I made an excerpt from my docker-compose.yml, but you probably have to figure out some things on your own
version: '3.4' services: dovecot: image: dovecot/dovecot:2.3.20 restart: unless-stopped volumes: - ./dovecot/:/etc/dovecot - /mnt/storage/dovecot/mail:/srv/mail - ./caddy/data/caddy/certificates/acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org-directory/wildcard_.my.domain/wildcard_.my.domain.crt:/etc/ssl/cert.crt - ./caddy/data/caddy/certificates/acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org-directory/wildcard_.my.domain/wildcard_.my.domain.key:/etc/ssl/key.key ports: - 993:993
contents of ./dovecot folder:
dovecot.conf passwords
contents of dovecot.conf (I think I searched online to find a good example, I don’t remember where from…)
## manage this file mail_home=/srv/mail/%Lu mail_location=sdbox:~/Mail mail_uid=1000 mail_gid=1000 protocols = imap pop3 submission sieve lmtp first_valid_uid = 1000 last_valid_uid = 1000 passdb { driver = passwd-file args = scheme=argon2i /etc/dovecot/passwords } ssl=yes ssl_cert=</etc/ssl/cert.crt ssl_key=</etc/ssl/key.key namespace { inbox = yes separator = / mailbox Drafts { auto = subscribe special_use = \Drafts } mailbox Sent { auto = subscribe special_use = \Sent } mailbox Spam { auto = subscribe special_use = \Junk } mailbox Trash { auto = subscribe special_use = \Trash } mailbox Archive { auto = subscribe special_use = \Archive } } service lmtp { inet_listener { port = 24 } } listen = * log_path=/dev/stdout info_log_path=/dev/stdout debug_log_path=/dev/stdout
Paperless-ngx might be worth a look. Probably overkill if you just want to store mails but great for general purpose document management.