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Chatmail services optimized for Delta Chat apps

This repository helps to setup a ready-to-use chatmail server comprised of a minimal setup of the battle-tested postfix smtp and dovecot imap services.

The setup is designed and optimized for providing chatmail accounts for use by Delta Chat apps.

Chatmail accounts are automatically created by a first login, after which the initially specified password is required for using them.

Deploying your own chatmail server

To deploy chatmail on your own server, you must have set-up ssh authentication and need to use an ed25519 key, due to an upstream bug in paramiko. You also need to add your private key to the local ssh-agent, because you can't type in your password during deployment.

We use chat.example.org as the chatmail domain in the following steps. Please substitute it with your own domain.

  1. Install the cmdeploy command in a virtualenv

     git clone https://github.com/deltachat/chatmail
 cd chatmail
 scripts/initenv.sh

  2. Create chatmail configuration file chatmail.ini:

     scripts/cmdeploy init chat.example.org  # <-- use your domain

  3. Point your domain to the server's IP address, if you haven't done so already. Verify that SSH root login works:

     ssh [email protected]   # <-- use your domain

  4. Deploy to the remote chatmail server:

     scripts/cmdeploy run

    This script will check that you have all necessary DNS records. If DNS records are missing, it will recommend which you should configure at your DNS provider (it can take some time until they are public).

Other helpful commands:

To check the status of your remotely running chatmail service:

scripts/cmdeploy status

To display and check all recommended DNS records:

scripts/cmdeploy dns

To test whether your chatmail service is working correctly:

scripts/cmdeploy test

To measure the performance of your chatmail service:

scripts/cmdeploy bench

Overview of this repository

This repository has four directories:

  • cmdeploy is a collection of configuration files and a pyinfra-based deployment script.

  • chatmaild is a python package containing several small services which handle authentication, trigger push notifications on new messages, ensure that outbound mails are encrypted, delete inactive users, and some other minor things. chatmaild can also be installed as a stand-alone python package.

  • www contains the html, css, and markdown files which make up a chatmail server's web page. Edit them before deploying to make your chatmail server stand out.

  • scripts offers two convenience tools for beginners; initenv.sh installs the necessary dependencies to a local virtual environment, and the scripts/cmdeploy script enables you to run the cmdeploy command line tool in the local virtual environment.

cmdeploy

The cmdeploy/src/cmdeploy/cmdeploy.py command line tool helps with setting up and managing the chatmail service. cmdeploy init creates the chatmail.ini config file. cmdeploy run uses a pyinfra-based script to automatically install or upgrade all chatmail components on a server, according to the chatmail.ini config.

The components of chatmail are:

  • postfix smtp server accepts sent messages (both from your users and from other servers)

  • dovecot imap server stores messages for your users until they download them

  • nginx shows the web page with your privacy policy and additional information

  • acmetool manages TLS certificates for dovecot, postfix, and nginx

  • opendkim for signing messages with DKIM and rejecting inbound messages without DKIM

  • mtail for collecting anonymized metrics in case you have monitoring

  • and the chatmaild services, explained in the next section:

chatmaild

chatmaild offers several commands which differentiate a chatmail server from a classic mail server. If you deploy them with cmdeploy, they are run by systemd services in the background. A short overview:

  • doveauth implements create-on-login account creation semantics and is used by Dovecot during login authentication and by Postfix which in turn uses Dovecot SASL to authenticate users to send mails for them.

  • filtermail prevents unencrypted e-mail from leaving the chatmail service and is integrated into postfix's outbound mail pipelines.

  • chatmail-metadata is contacted by a dovecot lua script to store user-specific server-side config. On new messages, it passes the user's push notification token to notifications.delta.chat so the push notifications on the user's phone can be triggered by Apple/Google.

  • delete_inactive_users deletes users if they have not logged in for a very long time. The timeframe can be configured in chatmail.ini.

  • lastlogin is contacted by dovecot when a user logs in and stores the date of the login.

  • echobot is a small bot for test purposes. It simply echoes back messages from users.

  • chatmail-metrics collects some metrics and displays them at https://example.org/metrics.

Home page and getting started for users

cmdeploy run also creates default static Web pages and deploys them to a nginx web server with:

  • a default index.html along with a QR code that users can click to create accounts on your chatmail provider,

  • a default info.html that is linked from the home page,

  • a default policy.html that is linked from the home page.

All .html files are generated by the according markdown .md file in the www/src directory.

Refining the web pages

scripts/cmdeploy webdev

This starts a local live development cycle for chatmail Web pages:

  • uses the www/src/page-layout.html file for producing static HTML pages from www/src/*.md files

  • continously builds the web presence reading files from www/src directory and generating html files and copying assets to the www/build directory.

  • Starts a browser window automatically where you can "refresh" as needed.

Emergency Commands to disable automatic account creation

If you need to stop account creation, e.g. because some script is wildly creating accounts, login to the server with ssh and run:

    touch /etc/chatmail-nocreate

While this file is present, account creation will be blocked.

Ports

Postfix listens on ports 25 (smtp) and 587 (submission) and 465 (submissions). Dovecot listens on ports 143 (imap) and 993 (imaps). nginx listens on port 8443 (https-alt) and 443 (https). Port 443 multiplexes HTTPS, IMAP and SMTP using ALPN to redirect connections to ports 8443, 465 or 993. acmetool listens on port 80 (http).

Delta Chat apps will, however, discover all ports and configurations automatically by reading the autoconfig XML file from the chatmail service.

Email authentication

chatmail servers rely on DKIM to authenticate incoming emails. Incoming emails must have a valid DKIM signature with Signing Domain Identifier (SDID, d= parameter in the DKIM-Signature header) equal to the From: header domain. This property is checked by OpenDKIM screen policy script before validating the signatures. This correpsonds to strict DMARC alignment (adkim=s), but chatmail does not rely on DMARC and does not consult the sender policy published in DMARC records. Other legacy authentication mechanisms such as iprev and SPF are also not taken into account. If there is no valid DKIM signature on the incoming email, the sender receives a "5.7.1 No valid DKIM signature found" error.

Outgoing emails must be sent over authenticated connection with envelope MAIL FROM (return path) corresponding to the login. This is ensured by Postfix which maps login username to MAIL FROM with smtpd_sender_login_maps and rejects incorrectly authenticated emails with reject_sender_login_mismatch policy. From: header must correspond to envelope MAIL FROM, this is ensured by filtermail proxy.

Migrating chatmail server to a new host

If you want to migrate chatmail from an old machine to a new machine, you can use these steps. They were tested with a linux laptop; you might need to adjust some of the steps to your environment.

Let's assume that your mail_domain is mail.example.org, all involved machines run Debian 12, your old server's IP address is 13.37.13.37, and your new server's IP address is 13.12.23.42.

During the guide, you might get a warning about changed SSH Host keys; in this case, just run ssh-keygen -R "mail.example.org" as recommended to make sure you can connect with SSH.

  1. First, copy /var/lib/acme to the new server with ssh [email protected] tar c /var/lib/acme | ssh [email protected] tar x -C /var/lib/. This transfers your TLS certificate.

  2. You should also copy /etc/dkimkeys to the new server with ssh [email protected] tar c /etc/dkimkeys | ssh [email protected] tar x -C /etc/ so the DKIM DNS record stays correct.

  3. On the new server, run chown root: -R /var/lib/acme and chown root: -R /etc/dkimkeys to make sure the permissions are correct.

  4. Run cmdeploy run --disable-mail --ssh-host 13.12.23.42 to install chatmail on the new machine. postfix and dovecot are disabled for now, we will enable them later.

  5. Now, point DNS to the new IP addresses.

    You can already remove the old IP addresses from DNS. Existing Delta Chat users will still be able to connect to the old server, send and receive messages, but new users will fail to create new profiles with your chatmail server.

    If other servers try to deliver messages to your new server they will fail, but normally email servers will retry delivering messages for at least a week, so messages will not be lost.

  6. Now you can run cmdeploy run --disable-mail --ssh-host 13.37.13.37 to disable your old server.

    Now your users will notice the migration and will not be able to send or receive messages until the migration is completed.

  7. After everything is stopped, you can copy the /home/vmail/mail directory to the new server. It includes all user data, messages, password hashes, etc.

    Just run: ssh [email protected] tar c /home/vmail/mail | ssh [email protected] tar x -C /home/vmail/

    After this, your new server has all the necessary files to start operating :)

  8. To be sure the permissions are still fine, run chown vmail: -R /home/vmail on the new server.

  9. Finally, you can run cmdeploy run to turn on chatmail on the new server. Your users can continue using the chatmail server, and messages which were sent after step 6. should arrive now. Voilà!

Setting up a reverse proxy

A chatmail server does not depend on the client IP address for its operation, so it can be run behind a reverse proxy. This will not even affect incoming mail authentication as DKIM only checks the cryptographic signature of the message and does not use the IP address as the input.

For example, you may want to self-host your chatmail server and only use hosted VPS to provide a public IP address for client connections and incoming mail. You can connect chatmail server to VPS using a tunnel protocol such as WireGuard and setup a reverse proxy on a VPS to forward connections to the chatmail server over the tunnel. You can also setup multiple reverse proxies for your chatmail server in different networks to ensure your server is reachable even when one of the IPs becomes inaccessible due to hosting or routing problems.

Note that your server still needs to be able to make outgoing connections on port 25 to send messages outside.

To setup a reverse proxy (or rather Destination NAT, DNAT) for your chatmail server, put the following configuration in /etc/nftables.conf:

#!/usr/sbin/nft -f

flush ruleset

define wan = eth0

# Which ports to proxy.
#
# Note that SSH is not proxied
# so it is possible to log into the proxy server
# and not the original one.
define ports = { smtp, http, https, imap, imaps, submission, submissions }

# The host we want to proxy to.
define ipv4_address = AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD
define ipv6_address = [XXX::1]

table ip nat {
        chain prerouting {
                type nat hook prerouting priority dstnat; policy accept;
                iif $wan tcp dport $ports dnat to $ipv4_address
        }

        chain postrouting {
                type nat hook postrouting priority 0;

                oifname $wan masquerade
        }
}

table ip6 nat {
        chain prerouting {
                type nat hook prerouting priority dstnat; policy accept;
                iif $wan tcp dport $ports dnat to $ipv6_address
        }

        chain postrouting {
                type nat hook postrouting priority 0;

                oifname $wan masquerade
        }
}

table inet filter {
        chain input {
                type filter hook input priority filter; policy drop;

                # Accept ICMP.
                # It is especially important to accept ICMPv6 ND messages,
                # otherwise IPv6 connectivity breaks.
                icmp type { echo-request } accept
                icmpv6 type { echo-request, nd-neighbor-solicit, nd-router-advert, nd-neighbor-advert } accept

                # Allow incoming SSH connections.
                tcp dport { ssh } accept

                ct state established accept
        }
        chain forward {
                type filter hook forward priority filter; policy drop;

                ct state established accept
                ip daddr $ipv4_address counter accept
                ip6 daddr $ipv6_address counter accept
        }
        chain output {
                type filter hook output priority filter;
        }
}

Run systemctl enable nftables.service to ensure configuration is reloaded when the proxy server reboots.

Uncomment in /etc/sysctl.conf the following two lines:

net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=1

Then reboot the server or do sysctl -p and nft -f /etc/nftables.conf.

Once proxy server is set up, you can add its IP address to the DNS.