Well I set up my email server thru cloudflare and managed to receive emails directly to my basement server. I could live with this and the various security threats incoming thru my unifi. But one thing is for sure, my wife won’t have any of it. She’s a total backwards thinking give me windows or I’ll jump kind of Gal. So I found that I could run a dockerized Thunderbird instance and I thought … Wow! I can just login to it from my computer or my phone, Surely this is it! I can have emails backed up from Gmail to my server and just access my server! And you know what? It works! I can access my Gmail on my browser! It’s beautiful!.. But then I login through my phone and wow! I can access my Gmail! Thru my phone! Except the interface is the same as my desktop. It’s literally a VNC to the server. I can login to it on my desktop and watch the mouse move as I move my finger on my phone! Great party trick, but…the text is microscopic. So is there another way to get IMAP and SMTP interface to Gmail, archiving all emails on my own server? I literally don’t want any of my emails to live on a Gmail server, but I want to be able to send receive and search emails I previously passed through Gmail but now live on my server.
But one thing is for sure, my wife won’t have any of it. She’s a total backwards thinking give me windows or I’ll jump kind of Gal.
So… forward her inbox to her personal gmail account? Keep your mail server as it was for you?
Or better yet, let her keep her gmail. Don’t force any lab instability on to others… especially email. One lost important email (even if not your fault) and you’ll never hear the end of it.
SMTP is stupidly forgiving. You’re not going to magically lose singular emails.
Until the basement floods and the server goes offline for a few days; or botched upgrade that’s failing quietly; over zealous spam assassin configuration; etc etc
It sounded like they were trying to archive things from Gmail to their own server, so just cut the middleman jank out, and let the wife continue to use her Gmail as intended.
Stupid rspamd default config on my server blocked an email confirming an order from rayban I guess because it was the first time it saw an email from them? Couldn’t even release it, which annoyed me greatly.
And it also put a confirmation from a hotel into quarantine because the resort didn’t have a valid spf record. But at least I could release that one.
I ended up making it much more permissive as a result. But it was super annoying.
Until the basement floods and the server goes offline for a few days
That’s what backups are for.
or botched upgrade that’s failing quietly;
See above
over zealous spam assassin configuration;
That’s an assumption that you’re using this specific product.
What’s funny is you think that all of this can’t happen to your stuff on Google’s servers either for some reason… Say the wrong thing in a Youtube comment? Boom whole google profile banned. All your emails are gone too.
Or random software that interfaces poorly with each other (https://support.google.com/mail/thread/142335843/all-of-my-emails-have-disappeared-how-can-i-recover-them?hl=en)
I’m not saying you’re wrong — I’ve even upvoted your earlier comments because I’m generally in agreement; you’re an instance admin judging by your handle, go and check the vote history yourself lol.
I’m saying people shouldn’t force their janky unproven solo solution on to someone else who doesn’t have their level of distrust, and would just rather trust the multibillion multinational corporation, when all they want is something that’s been working fine for them for all they care.
Well… No offense… but duh? It’s not like OP can migrate his spouses “Spouse@gmail.com” address to his mail server.
I was under the assumption (and I could be wrong) that OP owns the domain… And wants to run their mailboxes. If she wants to keep her own mailbox and use it, just forward it to her gmail if that’s what she wants. I’m also not insinuating forcing someone into something.
I own my domain(you guessed correctly) and host my own emails. My spouse does use an inbox on my server(actually a few)… If she didn’t want to anymore she can open a mailbox where-ever she wants… and I’ll even forward whatever I get to her. That’s it. Wouldn’t stop me from running my own inbox on my own server. And I’m not forcing her to do anything at all. She can use it or not.
This is the mentality I have when I made the previous comments. Just forward her stuff off, she can go wherever she wants.
Gmail offers imap amd smtp access. You have to enable 2FA, and then it will allow you to create account for so called “less secure apps”.
In your place, I’d either continue using gmail directly, or finish the configuration of the self hosted mail server and just use that with any smtp/imap client. I suggest getting a separate domain for testing first, before moving your primary inbox there.
Not sure why all the complexity. I just set my Gmail account to forward to an address on my self-hosted domain, and set it to delete after. Then I can check my “gmail” using standard IMAP on my own server (I also run RainLoop for a webmail interface). Sending mail back through Gmail is more complex, though, since Google put some protections on it to prevent spam. Since I don’t have to send from my Gmail account very often, I just log in to the web interface those rare times I need to do it.
But then I don’t get all the previous mail forwarded. I have to go get zip files and such.
You can use Thunderbird to copy your old messages from your Gmail account to your self-hosted IMAP.
I think I missed something in your description, but what are you running on your local server? I think most people set up postfix to relay the emails over to gmail or whoever, and there are options in postfix for backwards compatibility with Outlook or even Microsoft Mail so your wife could use whatever client she wants. If you don’t have a local mail server set up then this is probably what you want to do. This method allow a local or remote connection from any client so you could run K9 on your phone instead of a VPN.
For opening such a setup to the internet (and allowing access from anywhere), make sure you have strong passwords on your accounts, require SASL authentication, and set up fail2ban to block repeated attempts to hack your mailboxes. Don’t run anything else on the same server (or use virtual machines or strong containers) to reduce the chance of your mail server getting compromised other ways, and you should be good to go.
Just let her have Gmail if she is willing to divorce you over windows and email (what a handful you’ve caught there lad)
On her computer, why not just use Thunderbird on it? Or even outlook, or whatever she likes. She just needs to pick the software.
On her phone, or even yours, why the stuff with accessing Thunderbird through vnc. Just add the server to whatever mail app on your phones?
If you want a web based thing, roundcube or sogo. But Thunderbird is gonna suck the way you are trying to use it.
You’re right. I was just trying something different. My thinking was…hmm I don’t need a full SMTP IMAP system, Thunderbird can do that. So I searched and found a dockerized Thunderbird. But it turns out to be an idiotic implementation. Why would I install a full OS system to VNC into it to use an app inside of it. But maybe that’s easier for some people than to try and come up with a better way to send and receive authenticated emails?
I just posted this latest email about a traffic violation apparently. It’s just a scam. A fantastic scam too.
If the emails live on your server, can’t you use software there to send, receive and search emails?
I’m going to try using round cube. If it can go into my own SMTP and IMAP it should be able to go into Google’s. But how do I archive/retrieve emails so they live only on my server after extraction from Google. I want to keep IMAP but not share my IMAP folders with Google.
You use an IMAP syncer, like this one:
A word of caution: I professionally hosted email for over a decade.
90% or incoming email will be spam. Anti-spam tools will need regular updates. Backups are also super important.
All things considered, I don’t host my own email anymore although I know all the pieces involved.
There are also some independent email hosts that are good like Fastmail or for extra privacy, Proton Mail.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters IMAP Internet Message Access Protocol for email SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol VNC Virtual Network Computing for remote desktop access VPN Virtual Private Network
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 17 acronyms.
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This is something I want to know too!
I don’t believe google deletes anything that has entered their system, my use case is that they don’t have visibility on when are my devices online, how many so I have, and such. But my gmail address has not been my primary one for long, so it’s not that important.All I have found so far, though, is that what I need is possibly called a Message Delivery Agent.
thru
This was the biggest let down ever this weekend!
