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?
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
27 points (82.9% liked)
Selfhosted
39435 readers
9 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
Resources:
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just let her have Gmail if she is willing to divorce you over windows and email (what a handful you've caught there lad)
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.
[Thread #946 for this sub, first seen 1st Sep 2024, 20:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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.
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.
This was the biggest let down ever this weekend!