Well I set up my email server thru cloudflare and managed to receive emails directly to my basement server. I could live with this and the various security threats incoming thru my unifi. But one thing is for sure, my wife won’t have any of it. She’s a total backwards thinking give me windows or I’ll jump kind of Gal. So I found that I could run a dockerized Thunderbird instance and I thought … Wow! I can just login to it from my computer or my phone, Surely this is it! I can have emails backed up from Gmail to my server and just access my server! And you know what? It works! I can access my Gmail on my browser! It’s beautiful!.. But then I login through my phone and wow! I can access my Gmail! Thru my phone! Except the interface is the same as my desktop. It’s literally a VNC to the server. I can login to it on my desktop and watch the mouse move as I move my finger on my phone! Great party trick, but…the text is microscopic. So is there another way to get IMAP and SMTP interface to Gmail, archiving all emails on my own server? I literally don’t want any of my emails to live on a Gmail server, but I want to be able to send receive and search emails I previously passed through Gmail but now live on my server.
Gmail offers imap amd smtp access. You have to enable 2FA, and then it will allow you to create account for so called “less secure apps”.
In your place, I’d either continue using gmail directly, or finish the configuration of the self hosted mail server and just use that with any smtp/imap client. I suggest getting a separate domain for testing first, before moving your primary inbox there.
Not sure why all the complexity. I just set my Gmail account to forward to an address on my self-hosted domain, and set it to delete after. Then I can check my “gmail” using standard IMAP on my own server (I also run RainLoop for a webmail interface). Sending mail back through Gmail is more complex, though, since Google put some protections on it to prevent spam. Since I don’t have to send from my Gmail account very often, I just log in to the web interface those rare times I need to do it.
But then I don’t get all the previous mail forwarded. I have to go get zip files and such.
You can use Thunderbird to copy your old messages from your Gmail account to your self-hosted IMAP.
If the emails live on your server, can’t you use software there to send, receive and search emails?
I’m going to try using round cube. If it can go into my own SMTP and IMAP it should be able to go into Google’s. But how do I archive/retrieve emails so they live only on my server after extraction from Google. I want to keep IMAP but not share my IMAP folders with Google.
You use an IMAP syncer, like this one:
A word of caution: I professionally hosted email for over a decade.
90% or incoming email will be spam. Anti-spam tools will need regular updates. Backups are also super important.
All things considered, I don’t host my own email anymore although I know all the pieces involved.
There are also some independent email hosts that are good like Fastmail or for extra privacy, Proton Mail.
This is something I want to know too!
I don’t believe google deletes anything that has entered their system, my use case is that they don’t have visibility on when are my devices online, how many so I have, and such. But my gmail address has not been my primary one for long, so it’s not that important.All I have found so far, though, is that what I need is possibly called a Message Delivery Agent.
On her computer, why not just use Thunderbird on it? Or even outlook, or whatever she likes. She just needs to pick the software.
On her phone, or even yours, why the stuff with accessing Thunderbird through vnc. Just add the server to whatever mail app on your phones?
If you want a web based thing, roundcube or sogo. But Thunderbird is gonna suck the way you are trying to use it.
You’re right. I was just trying something different. My thinking was…hmm I don’t need a full SMTP IMAP system, Thunderbird can do that. So I searched and found a dockerized Thunderbird. But it turns out to be an idiotic implementation. Why would I install a full OS system to VNC into it to use an app inside of it. But maybe that’s easier for some people than to try and come up with a better way to send and receive authenticated emails?
I just posted this latest email about a traffic violation apparently. It’s just a scam. A fantastic scam too.
This was the biggest let down ever this weekend!
