I am a long time CentOS|Fedora/Bind/Postfix-dovecot user. I go back to Whitehat (before there was CentOS), but never Ubunto. I REALLY need to update what I have here.
I am on AT&T fiber with a block of dedicated ipv4 addresses with reverse lookup. My current servers are in a rack in my basement NOC. But no dedicated block for IPv6, as AT&T will not give me that and do the reverse lookup mapping.
I have an open host name ready for a MiaB installation, but I need a few questions answered before I take the dive. The DNS migration SHOULD be simple plus I will finally gain DNSSEC and other newer stuff. Challenge is my mail service which is for multiple domains (I see that supported) with each user’s mail as separate files and thus the scary part of migration.
Finally first question: Can I migrate my users? An example user structure is:
/home/vmail/mydomain.com/rgmhtt/
with dirs:
new, cur, tmp, sieve
cur has all the mail files on the server.
Oh, I use postfixadmin to maintain my mailserver.
IF I can migrate my users, then I will need to scope out what size Raspberry Pi to buy, along with an SSD. All in a nice case.
I can’t help you much, but any time I switch email providers, I just export the emails for a mailbox to a .pst file and then re-import once the new mailbox is setup. Maybe this might be a solution for you?
Also, I would recommend just hosting MIAB on a VPS. I think with an AT&T residential IP address, your sent emails will go to spam or not delivered at all.
I host on on an OVH VPS with 2 AMD Epyc cores, 2GB RAM, 40GB NVMe storage. It works great! For a near 100% delivery rate to inboxes when sending emails, I use MXRoute.com as my relay service. I bought a cheap 5GB lifetime plan with them for $75 so it was one and done. For $4.50/month, it’s a rock solid solution and I would trust this setup way more than AT&T home hosted solution.
Just my $0.02. I’m new to MIAB this year and tech savy enough to follow guides to set it up.
IP addressing and SMTP movement is not a problem. I have been hosting my own mail here before going to AT&T fiber, and I knew what to tell them to do. It WAS a challenge on the reverse IPv4, as long ago I reported a bug to Cricket on how his book told how to use the GENERATE command. The AT&T techs were doing it by the book (i.e. the non-corrected ver of Cricket’s BIND book!).
You can thank or hate me for RFC 1918; my doing. And I was on the IETF Apps Directorate when we brought IMAP into the fold.
I know this stuff and have been doing it for decades, but I am to the point of looking to do less; leverage other’s fine work. I just can’t roll my own anymore.
Also with my consulting work, I can tell customers where the mail they send me sits. For one gig, this was really important. But I am no longer comfortable with my defenses and need to upgrade my game.
No IPv6 addresses IS an issue and that may force me back to COMCAST. I do still have connections there through my IETF work…
But thanks. I will look some more into hosted services. A Raspberry Pi5, if it really uses 45W, would eat ~$35/yr for electricity.
I imagine you’re reusing your existing IP addresses, so you know they are acceptable (not on lots of block lists).
Re IPv6: It’s not difficult to do IPv6 reverse DNS yourself - if your ISP will provide a fixed address allocation and delegate to your server. I might have put some notes elsewhere on the forum, or I can give you some pointers.
Or, just ignore IPv6. Be sured to leave IPv6 setup & turned-on on the servers (otherwise things complain) but MIAB does not need IPv6 global addresses. (It will use them, if it’s got them.)
Re exporting: Have a look around the forum - most people seem to have used one of the IMAP export/import tools. But MIAB has a similar directory structure to yours … /home/user-data/mail/mailboxes/<domain>/<user>/ with cur, new, tmp, and a .folder for each additional folder that the user has set-up - then one file per email. Within the .folder(s), the same cur/new/tmp scheme is used.
The sieve stuff is in /home/user-data/mail/sieve/<domain>/<user>. I’ve no idea how compatible sieve is across versions …
Re Raspberry Pi: I ran MIAB on a Pi for some time, years ago. At the time, there was a missing library that I had to install, but otherwise the ARM version of everything was fine. Officially MIAB is Ubuntu 22.04 on x86_64, so you might expect to have to sort minor hassles yourself.
I found the my Pi not quite as stable as I’d like, so moved to an Intel NUC, which has been fine. But I’ve since been using Pis as other servers and had no more hassles than any other server … I suspect that putting everything on a UPS was the important upgrade
Yes, I have been running without IPv6 for quite some time, and most likely can continue to do so.
AT&T won’t give me static IPv6 addresses. They think they can make more money forcing people like me to go to a business service. More likely I will switch back to COMCAST. So I run my good-old trusty v4 for now.
Thanks for the confirmation on how MiaB stores email. Looks like I have tools to migrate.
It seems rPI 5 is a stable platform now, but given its power draw, I think i have an Intel system around here somewhere…
Just disable outgoing IPV6 in postfix/ main.cf, search this forum how to do it. IPV6 is wothless in terms of IP reputation and all big tech will blacklist if you send IPV6 only.
Despite years of many pushing for IPv6ONLY, it is not happening.
And I am blamed as RFC1918 was led by me!
Aviation (which is where I put most of my time now) is going IPv6 only to the planes. If you want IPv4 on your phone on the plane’s WiFi, that is via v4-in-v6. But this is an exception as it is mostly greenfield.
Some country’s cellular (India!) is native IPv6.
So I do know well about running IPv4 only services.
