iRedMail

Overview

• Why build your own mail server instead of outsourcing to external entities
• Major open source software used in iRedMail, and big picture of mail flow
• Which network ports are open by iRedMail

iRedMail (Open Source Edition)

• Install iRedMail (with downloadable installer) on:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS
  • Debian, Ubuntu
  • FreeBSD (without Jail), FreeBSD with Jail (ezjail)
  • OpenBSD
• After installation:
  • Setup DNS records for your iRedMail server (A, PTR, MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
• Additional installation tips
  • Install iRedMail with a remote MySQL server
  • Perform silent/unattended iRedMail installation
• Performance tuning for a busy server

iRedMail Enterprise Edition (EE)

• Install iRedMail Enterprise Edition
• Best Practice
• ChangeLog
• Request a free cert from Let's Encrypt
• Migration:
  • Migrate from iRedMail Easy
  • Migrate from iRedMail

Configure mail client applications

• Exchange ActiveSync: Setup Android devices
• Exchange ActiveSync: Setup BlackBerry 10 devices
• Exchange ActiveSync: Setup iOS devices
• Exchange ActiveSync: Setup Outlook 2013 for Windows
• Setup Thunderbird: POP3/IMAP, SMTP and global ldap address book
• Setup Thunderbird: SOGo Address Book and Calendar synchronization with CardDAV and CalDAV
• Mac OS X: Add contact service (CardDAV) in Contacts.app
• Mac OS X: Add calendar (CalDAV) and task (Reminders) service in iCalendar.app

Release notes and upgrade tutorials

• iRedMail release notes and upgrade tutorials
• iRedAdmin-Pro (web-based admin panel) release notes and upgrade tutorials
• iRedAPD (Postfix Access Policy Daemon) release notes and upgrade tutorials
• mlmmjadmin upgrade tutorial (RESTful API server used to manage mlmmj mailing list)

iRedMail Easy - Web-based Deployment, Upgrade and Tech Support Platform

• iRedMail Easy: Getting started
• iRedMail Easy: Best Practice
• iRedMail Easy: FAQ
• iRedMail Easy: Release Notes
• iRedMail Easy: Request a free cert from Let's Encrypt
• iRedMail Easy: How to cancel your subscription
• iRedMail Easy: Setup DNS records for autoconfig and autodiscover
• iRedMail Easy: Setup sudo for deployment
• iRedMail Easy: What is SSH jump server

Migrations

• Migrate old iRedMail server to the latest stable release
• Password hashes

How to

• Allow certain users to send email as another user
• Change mail attachment size
• Completely disable Amavisd + ClamAV + SpamAssassin
• Enable SMTP SASL AUTH on port 25
• Enable SMTPS service (SMTP over SSL, port 465)
• Disable spam virus scanning for outgoing mails
• Amavisd + SpamAssassin not working? no mail header (X-Spam-*) inserted
• Quarantining
• Sign DKIM signature on outgoing emails for new mail domain
• Allow insecure POP3/IMAP/SMTP connections without STARTTLS
• Allow internal network devices to send email with insecure connection
• Allow member to send email as mailing list or mail alias
• Allow some user to send email without smtp authentication
• Amavisd: Enable per-recipient policy lookup
• Authenticate without domain part in email address
• How to mark a mail domain as backup MX
• Change per-user mailbox format (e.g. maildir, mdbox)
• Change server hostname
• Process more (or less) emails concurrently
• Auto learn spam/ham with Dovecot imap_sieve plugin
• Dovecot Master User: Access user's mailbox without owner's password.
• Enable DNSBL service in Postfix to reduce spam
• Enable postscreen service
• Fail2ban: Store banned IP addresses in SQL database
• Force mail user to change password in 90 days
• Ignore Trash folder in mailbox quota
• LDAP: Add an alias domain
• LDAP: Add per-domain catch-all account
• LDAP: Add a mail alias account
• LDAP: Add a (unsubscribeable) mailing list
• LDAP: Bulk create mail users
• How to allow external access to OpenLDAP service
• LDAP: User mail forwarding
• Request a free cert from Let's Encrypt (for servers deployed with downloadable iRedMail installer)
• Mailbox sharing (Sharing IMAP folder with other users)
• Manage iRedAPD (white/blacklists, greylisting, throttling and more)
• Manage subscribeable mailing lists
• Monitor incoming and outgoing mails with BCC
• Move detected spam to Junk folder
• Per-domain or per-user transport (relay)
• Pipe incoming email for certain user to external script
• Promote a mail user to be global admin
• How to create and manage public folder
• Force Dovecot to recalculate mailbox quota
• Setup relayhost
• Reset user password
• Restrict mail user to login from specified IP addresses or networks
• Send out email from specified IP address
• Sign disclaimer on outgoing mails
• SOGo: per-user free/busy availability
• SOGo: Manage resources
• SQL: Add an alias domain
• SQL: Add per-domain catch-all account
• SQL: Add a mail alias account
• SQL: Create new mail user
• SQL: User mail forwarding
• Enable SRS (Sender Rewriting Scheme) support
• Store SpamAssassin bayes in SQL
• Run web applications under subdomain with Nginx
• Track user last login time
• Fixes you need after upgrading Debian from 10 to 11
• Fixes you need after upgrading Debian from 11 to 12
• Fixes you need after upgrading Debian from 8 to 9
• Fixes you need after upgrading Debian from 9 to 10
• Upgrade Dovecot from 2.2.x to 2.3.x
• How to upgrade netdata
• Upgrade php to v8.0 on CentOS Stream / Rocky / AlmaLinux 8
• Upgrade SOGo from v4 to v5
• Fixes you need after upgrading Ubuntu from 14.04 to 16.04
• Upgrade Ubuntu from 18.04 to 20.04
• Upgrade Ubuntu from 22.04 to 24.04
• Use a bought SSL certificate
• Use OpenLDAP as address book in Microsoft Outlook
• Per-user alias address
• Webmail customization

Documents contributed by iRedMail users:

• Anti-spam with Dovecot antispam plugin and SpamAssassin, contributed by Dexus.

Third-party integrations

Below tutorials are maintained by iRedMail project.

• Integrate Microsoft Active Directory for user authentication and address book

• Integrate mlmmj mailing list manager (mlmmj is a required core component since iRedMail-0.9.8):

  • For LDAP backends
  • For MySQL/MariaDB backend
  • For PostgreSQL backend

• Integrate netdata monitor (netdata is an optional component since iRedMail-0.9.8):

  • For Linux
  • For FreeBSD
  • netdata doesn't work on OpenBSD (yet).

• Install SOGo groupware on:

  • CentOS 6: MySQL, OpenLDAP.

Documents contributed by iRedMail users:

• Integreate OpenFire in iRedMail (MySQL backend) (Turkish)
• Enabling Apache Solr 4.10 (using jetty) with Dovecot 2.2 for fulltext search results on Centos 6 (iRedMail compatible)
• Install iRedMail and Mailman on Debian Squeeze. Howtoforge tutorial, contributed by Jason Norwood-Young.
• Integrate DBMail in iRedMail (MySQL backend), CentOS
• High-Availability Maildir Storage With GlusterFS + CentOS 5.x, contributed by Basem Hegazy. 2011-06-26
• Integrate OpenVPN in iRedMail with OpenLDAP, Howtoforge tutorial.
• Integrate Ejabberd in iRedMail with OpenLDAP

Cluster

Documents contributed by iRedMail users:

• Build an iRedMail fail-over Cluster with KeepAlived, HAProxy, GlusterFS, OpenLDAP, Mariadb, contributed by Setyo Prayitno
• An Ultra-HA, full Mult-Master E-mail cluster with iRedMail, MariaDB, and IPVS, contributed by Joshua Boniface.

iRedAdmin-Pro

• iRedAdmin-Pro: Custom (Amavisd) ban rules
• iRedAdmin-Pro: Custom base url (/iredadmin)
• iRedAdmin-Pro: Custom logo image, brand name, short product description
• iRedAdmin-Pro (LDAP backend): Add and manage custom services for mail user
• iRedAdmin-Pro: Customize maildir path
• iRedAdmin-Pro: Default password restrictions
• iRedAdmin-Pro: Domain ownership verification
• iRedAdmin-Pro: RESTful API
• iRedAdmin-Pro: Enable self-service to allow users to manage their own preferences and more
• iRedAdmin-Pro: Set a proper time zone
• iRedAdmin-Pro: Priority of spam policy used in iRedMail & iRedAdmin-Pro
• iRedAdmin-Pro: Subscribable mailing list
• iRedAdmin: Translate iRedAdmin to your local language

Troubleshooting and Debug

• Turn on debug mode in Amavisd and SpamAssassin
• Turn on debug mode in Dovecot
• Turn on debug logging in Fail2ban
• Turn on debug mode in iRedAPD
• Log executed SQL commands in MySQL/MariaDB
• Turn on debug mode in Nginx
• Turn on debug mode in OpenLDAP
• Turn on debug mode in Postfix
• Turn on debug mode in Roundcube webmail
• Turn on debug mode in SOGo

Frequently Asked Questions

• Errors you may see while maintaining iRedMail server
• Why append timestamp in maildir path
• Explanation of Amavisd SQL database
• Backup and restore
• Locations of configuration and log files of major components
• Introduce the OpenLDAP server configured by iRedMail
• Why no sieve support (Vacation, Forwarding) in SOGo Groupware