Email on wadhome.org

From WikiWad

Contents 1 wadhome.org serves email! 1.1 Features 1.2 Technical Details 1.3 How to set it up 1.4 Settings to use on your email client 1.5 How to change your password

wadhome.org serves email!

This mail server is available for family and friends to use. Just let me know if you are interested, and I'll set up an account for you. It just takes a minute.

Features

• Securely access your email via the web or the email client of your choice.
• Make as many folders and sub-folders as you like to save emails.
• Email and folders are all stored server-side, so you can get to it from wherever you are.
• More than a hundred gigabytes of free disk space available; you can save literally millions of email messages if you want!
• Server is backed up weekly, and the disks are mirrored anyway, meaning we're safe from drive failure.
• Very good spam filtering automatically sorts suspected spam into your SPAM folder.

Technical Details

• The server runs a rock-solid version of Linux called Debian (currently running Etch, the stable version).
• Email is secured using SSH and TLS. Email software used is postfix, dovecot, spamAssassin, and squirrelMail.
• All email software I use on my server is actively maintained, high-quality, open-source, secure, free software.
• I use sa-update, which regularly pulls down spam identification rules from more than a dozen different sources.

How to set it up

1. Send me an email message (eric@wadhome.org) if you want an account.
2. Once I've set up your account, you can get to it through https://wadhome.org/webmail

You might see a warning about a certificate for wadhome.org's secure website, saying it's not signed by a trusted source. You should accept the certificate permanently. (If you care to know why, this indicates that you trust the website is what it says it is; if I had paid $100 to get my certificate signed by a certificate authority, that message wouldn't show up. I have better ways to spend $100.).

Settings to use on your email client

Instead of using that web interface all the time, I recommend downloading and installing an email client program. You might already have Microsoft Outlook Express, or something like that. I recommend Thunderbird. Lots nicer, easier to use, more powerful, and free.

Set it up as follows:

• Incoming email
  • incoming email server name is wadhome.org. Type is IMAP.
  • Use SSL over port 993. Don't check the "secure authentication" box.
• Outgoing email
  • outgoing email server name is wadhome.org.
  • enable TLS over port 25.
  • Enable username/password authentication.

Note that your Internet Service Provider might not let you send email through an external system. This is just fine, simply put your ISP's information into the outgoing email section.

How to change your password

1. Go to the wadhome.org ssh page.
2. Wait a while, until the MindTerm applet appears in a window.
3. press ENTER to accept "wadhome.org" as what you are connecting to.
4. type in your username and press ENTER
5. type in your passsword and press ENTER
6. You should now be at a prompt. It's actually your Linux shell account, if you know what that means.
7. type passwd and press enter.
8. Follow the instructions: Enter your current password, then the new password twice, as prompted.
9. Once finished, type exit and press ENTER.