Home server deployment

[oleboyredw]

New to the forums so hopefully putting my question in correct place, if not let me know and I'll move it.

I've installed Arch onto a RPI2. The PI has two drives (Small SSD for system and 'high-use' data and large HDD for all my media).
I've got LMS, Owncloud, FTP server, Plex, Apache and few other packages working fine and very happy. My final task is to move my mailserver from an Excito B3 to my RPI2, and that's what I'm looking for some guidance on.

I seem to be going round in circles trying to get a mail server working. I started off using Arch wiki article and then looked at other articles trying to make postfix and dovecot work. They never seemed to get data from my three mail accounts on my ISP, meanwhile the B3 continued to get the mail via POP3. It seems very confusing and complex to me - but maybe it is just me.

I did look at IRedMail but it does not have ARM support. I also tried Citadel but that would not compile.

So, I went back to the B3 and looking through it's logs I spotted they also use fetchmail. I've now deleted postfix and dovecot and cleared out all the subdirectories/files to try to make a clean start. I've now installed fetchmail, postfix and dovecot but done no configuration.

Is there a good single source that can point me to a reasonably simple install/config for a mail server using those three packages, assuming I've got it correct that I need the three. (receiving from ISP with POP3 sending with SMTP.

Many thanks is advance for any suggestions that could get me to the end of this.

[moonman]

Have you tried transfering configs from B3 to your new setup? I am not familiar with setting up a mail server my self though.

[summers]

Are you talking about an MUA (Mail User Agent - used to pick up emails) or an MTA (Mail Transport Agent - used for recieving emails, and then routing through the internet, to where it goes)?

Kind of sounds like you are talking about a MTA. In the user content, these can tend to be quite simple, as all outgoing email needs to go via your ISP - so in MTA terms you just set up a smart hosts, to route all outgoing email that way. As that routing is simple, most MTA should work. When I was active in the area I used exim (this was 10 years gone), the default back then was sendmail. Bother were very powerful, exim more powerful. Configuration of both was cryptic, with exim the easier. In the 10 years since, don't know if there are any easier options. If I had to use a MTA again, I'd use exim.

Anyway only reason I can see to have a MTA in a home user context, is becuase you want the MTA to store outgoing emails, and only forward when the internet is up. Also if you need to recieve emails in the home context - which is mega rare. So suspect I've the wrong end of the stick, and you don't want an MTA - but then I don't understand the question.

[oleboyredw]

Thanks for replies. In answer to the questions:

moonman: I've got as far as working out the B3 uses fetchmail, postfix and dovecot. I've found some of the config files, but not quite everything. As they use their own GUI to administer the mail I dont see all the loads of config info for postfix or dovecot. The information you manage is mainly the fetchmail info. I've found the fetcmailrc file in /etc and will start with that.

summers: Hmmm, I'd assumed MTA. Emails arrive at the account on my ISP for four separate Ids (user1@jjj.isp.addr ... user4@jjjisp.addr. My server gets them periodically and they 'become available' to the four users, which are separate users on my home network. Those four users link to the server and see their own mail via imap.

Plan: as suggested by moonman, first I'm going to go back and try to understand how it works on the B3, then I'll try to move across the config files I can find for the software mentioned above until it hopefully springs to life. I'll have a bit of a read up on exim before I start.