A different reason for IMAP on FreeNAS

[sirjorj]

I was looking to migrate my email archive (that's years and years of emails) from OS X's mail app to the mail app in Windows 10 by pushing them to an IMAP server in bunches and then pulling them to the new machine. This lead to a search for some standard email archive format, but that search came up empty. I then got an idea and started looking into getting an IMAP server running on FreeNAS. I found a thread asking about this, but it was shot down due to the security implications of maintaining an email server in FreeNAS.

The security concerns were definitely warranted, but what if there is a special use case? What if FreeNAS would run an IMAP server only accessible to the local network for the sole purpose of hosting the email archive? This would not be a normal email server talking to other email servers on the Internet, but just one to connect to locally to move messages to.

Is this a valid use case? Is there something about IMAP that would make this not work? Is there a better way to store the old archive?

Thoughts?

 

[Ericloewe]

I guess it could work, but it seems like an awfully convoluted way of archiving emails.

Whatever format Microsoft Office Outlook (as opposed to outlook webmail) uses for archiving is bound to be somewhat popular.

 

[jgreco]

I was looking to migrate my email archive (that's years and years of emails) from OS X's mail app to the mail app in Windows 10 by pushing them to an IMAP server in bunches and then pulling them to the new machine. This lead to a search for some standard email archive format, but that search came up empty. I then got an idea and started looking into getting an IMAP server running on FreeNAS. I found a thread asking about this, but it was shot down due to the security implications of maintaining an email server in FreeNAS.

The security concerns were definitely warranted, but what if there is a special use case? What if FreeNAS would run an IMAP server only accessible to the local network for the sole purpose of hosting the email archive? This would not be a normal email server talking to other email servers on the Internet, but just one to connect to locally to move messages to.

Is this a valid use case? Is there something about IMAP that would make this not work? Is there a better way to store the old archive?

Thoughts?

You can absolutely run an IMAP server on FreeNAS. Create a jail, install your desired mail server software, and be done with it.

It used to be that FreeNAS didn't have support for jails. That's why we loudly said that you shouldn't try to use your NAS for web service or mail service or whatever. With jail support, not a big deal.

 

[Ericloewe]

You can absolutely run an IMAP server on FreeNAS. Create a jail, install your desired mail server software, and be done with it.

It used to be that FreeNAS didn't have support for jails. That's why we loudly said that you shouldn't try to use your NAS for web service or mail service or whatever. With jail support, not a big deal.

Well, the administration of a web-facing email server is not a task to be taken lightly.
I don't see it being a problem behind a firewall, with no outside interaction, though.

 

[jgreco]

Well, the administration of a web-facing email server is not a task to be taken lightly.
I don't see it being a problem behind a firewall, with no outside interaction, though.

A "web-facing email server"? Do you maybe mean an Internet facing email server? Because email and the web have basically nothing to do with each other, except that about twenty years ago various idiots had the catastrophic idea to combine MIME with HTML.

The Internet facing email server problem is a well-understood and long-solved problem.

 

[Ericloewe]

A "web-facing email server"? Do you maybe mean an Internet facing email server?

Pedantry is hard when you're typing on a phone. :(

The Internet facing email server problem is a well-understood and long-solved problem.

Sure, but it's something that requires learning and effort.

 

[jgreco]

Pedantry is hard when you're typing on a phone. :(

Laziness is no excuse.

Sure, but it's something that requires learning and effort.

Kinda like how to put something other than Windows on your PC.

Really, not *that* hard.

 

[sirjorj]

Thanks for the feedback.
After doing a bit more research, I think I'm gonna try running dovecot in a jail. This way, my archive is stored in a ZFS pool and it should be easy to include the actual data in my backup shell script I periodically run to back up the essentials to an external drive.

 

[jgreco]

That sounds like a sensible approach. Good luck and feel free to report back on how it works out!