Using chatmail relay as standard email server too?

[Andi]

I’ve set up my own chatmail relay server with /cmdeploy as described here - Setting up a chatmail relay - chatmail relay documentation . It’s a small very energy efficient box which runs 24/7 since a while. Debian 12 based.

Now I wonder if I can use this box for regular emails too. I see there is postfix and dovecot running. But I’ve no clue how I can add additional email users (beside the DeltaChat users). I’m running an email server since decades on another OS for private email exchange in my LAN. So I’m not totally new to email servers. But I’m no expert neither on Linux and not in any way emails servers on Linux. I never ever played with postfix or dovecot. Also very important, I don’t want to break my running chatmail server. There are already a few DeltaChat users on this server registered.

Any hints how to add standard email accounts to dovecot (I believe) on this server?

[Minim]

You can use the server as-is to send “regular“ e-mails as long as they are all encrypted with Autocrypt. Keymail only by default! If you want to send andor receive unencrypted mails on selected accounts, that is also possible. See:

Create a normal email with chatmail (I'm an admin)

Hi, I was trying to install a chatmail on a server. Since I am the administrator, could I create a normal email address for myself with running chatmail? something like admin@mydoman.com that can receive and send normal emails? If it’s possible, how should I do it? I tried to look between the documenation and in the issues and also here on the forum but I did not find the answer. Thanks

[ian]

Feel free to mark an answer as a solution if you found it helpful.

[Andi]

Thanks very much for response. I’ll work through the information there. But I’m only a hobby-admin with a very time consuming day-time job. It will take a while until I’ve get Dovecot running the way I like or new questions arise. Please be patient

[link2xt]

chatmail deletes messages from the server after 20 days by default. You will need to fetch messages regularly and store them locally. Or disable deletion and increase quota etc., at which point maybe you want to have a separate postfix+dovecot setup or setup mailcow.

[Andi]

God point. Is this valid for non-DeltaChat accounts too? I mean I wanna have sperate email accounts for local users (and in the long run accounts for other domain names) as the DeltaChat server uses.

I thought about a separate mail server but think it will not work cause both would need port 25, 465, 993, (110), 995… to the outside world. How can I separate encrypted emails from xyz@deltachat.domain and standard emails like abc@myother.domain?

[Minim]

All accounts on a server using the chatmail/relay software expire messages and accounts by default. The default expiry times are given, and can be changed, in the chatmail.ini file:

Questions about using ChatMail and Delta chat

here are the settings in the chatmail. ini file, and as I already understood, if I transferred 8 MB, then my storage is filled with 8 MB, yes, there are settings that delete more than 200 KB in 7 days, but as I understand it, for cofort use of delta chat, you should install 1 GB instead of 100 MB, and make the maximum transfer not 30 but 300 mb(I don’t understand why it is specified in bytes) # maximum mailbox size of a chatmail address space for files max_mailbox_size = 100M # maximum messag…

@link2xt

Or disable deletion and increase quota etc., at which point maybe you want to have a separate postfix+dovecot setup or setup mailcow.

“I want to run a server for trusted friends and give them non-expiring space, and I am also happy to offer more limited low-maintenance accounts to all comers” is probably a fairly common usecase. In some cases you might want to distinguish the manually-approved accounts by giving them a different domain or subdomain name, though. Anyone adding Keymail functionality to a mailserver package (@s0ph0s is doing this for Mailcow) might reasonably accomodate this two-tier setup.

[s0ph0s]

Mox, not Mailcow: Feature Request: Mox for Delta Chat · Issue #251 · mjl-/mox · GitHub

I anticipate that Mox will be able to be configured to do chatmail on one domain and regular email on another, but not both on the same domain (outside of existing special case handling of postmaster@)