Hi, Chris, Matthew, Lee, Ryan, thank you for your advice.
Let me explain in more detail what I currently have and what I need. I have three email accounts at different servers (not Gmail only). These three mail servers support SMTP/IMAP/POP3 over SSL/TSL. Currently I have a desktop at work, where I use Thunderbird that downloads emails with POP3 from the three servers. Also, from this desktop at work I'm sending emails, and there I keep my mail archive. Then I have a laptop and a desktop at home. At these computers I configured Thunderbird to check for emails at my three accounts using IMAP without downloading messages. When I want to respond to emails, I log into my desktop at work, download the new mail, and respond, keeping the archive. The current solution has the opposite of the desired properties: * Thunderbird keeps the archive, and I want my server to do this, * the three Thunderbirds have different configuration, and I want to have the same config at every of my computers, * the desktop at work has to keep running, and I want to turn if off when possible, * checking for mail is slow sometimes because three Thunderbird checks for mail the three accounts, while just my server should be checked fast. My server running OpenBSD, that currently is only my git server, is a small, power-efficient, quiet and reliable hardware (Soekris net5501), and I want to make it my mail server. My server would only be a relay for outgoing mail: it would not serve any domain, and it would relay messages that I send with Thunderbird to the servers where I have accounts. My server would receive (i.e. get and remove) mail with IMAP from the three mail servers where I have accounts. As the result, Thunderbird would be configured with a single IMAP server (my server), and a single SMTP server (my server). You mentioned to play with the MX records of DNS. I don't want to play tricks with MX records, and I'm not sure I understand how that would work. Thunderbird is configured with the name of the SMTP server, and so there is no need to trick Thunderbird to use my server. What format do you recommend for storing mail at the server? Maildir or mbox? I want stability and data consistency, performance is of a less concern. Best, Irek On 02.05.2013 21:37, Ireneusz Szcześniak wrote:
Hi, I'm running OpenBSD 5.2 on i386. I want to run there a personal mail server (further referred to as "my server") with some specific requirements. I want my server to be secure and stable. These are my critical requirements: * My server should support SMTP/IMAP with SSL/TLS. I want my server and the client (i.e. Thunderbird that I use) to authenticate with certificates that I issue. * Depending on the address with which I send my mail (I have three different email addresses), my server should relay the mail to the mail server, where I have the account (for instance gmail.com). * When the email that I send is received by my server, I want my server to save the email in the Sent mailbox. * I want the server to keep my email archive of about 5 GB (and growing). * I want to access my mail (Inbox, Sent and Archive) with IMAP. * I want my server to receive emails from my three accounts with IMAP. The ease and safety of archiving messages would be welcome. I'm an archiving freak, and I would love to have a reliable and easy way of archiving my mail. For instance, I love the way how one can archive git repositories by cloning, because it's safe and keeps the data consistent. Currently I have a desktop to which I login remotely from three different computers to receive and send mail with Thunderbird. Thunderbird keeps my email archive, sends and receives mail. The problem is that I'm tiried of logging into my remote desktop, and instead I would like to configure Thunderbird for a single IMAP server and a single SMTP server. For now I know that I want to use sendmail, since this is the default in OpenBSD. Any advice would be welcome. Thanks, Irek
-- Ireneusz (Irek) Szczesniak http://www.irkos.org
