Re: Building a secure communications server

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hello!

Clément Lassieur <clement@lassieur.org> skribis:

> Pjotr Prins <pjotr.public12@thebird.nl> writes:
>
>> Plan for a secure E-mail server
>>
>> The idea is to have a secure setup which can be replicated fast and
>> parameterized - i.e., there will be installation options. We'll
>> develop this so anyone can fire up a VPS instance and get a secure
>> communications environment - especially when people are on one host
>> and between hosts using encrypted channels.
>>
>> The plan is as follows:
>>
>> Phase 1
>>
>> . postfix with some utilities (postgrey, spfmilter)
>> . courier-imap
>> . web mail server using imap
>>
>> Phase 2
>>
>> . stunnel+sslh - for tunneling ssh/smtp/imap over port 443
>>
>> Phase 3
>>
>> . Spam/virus filters
>>
>> Phase 4
>>
>> . web based user mail account management
>>
>> Phase 5
>>
>> . mailman support
>>
>> Phase 6
>>
>> . irc support
>> . other messaging services
>>
>> Phase 7
>>
>> . voice support - mumble?
>>
>> My server runs phases 1-3.
>
> I don't understand how your server can run phases 1 to 3, since Postfix
> isn't packaged.  I guess you are running a foreign distro, which means
> you are still pretty far from you goal.
>
> My own mail server runs GuixSD with OpenSMTPD, which works very well (I
> even have one client!).  Is there an important feature OpenSMTPD is
> missing?  If so, we should package Postfix as a first step.
>
> Same question with Courier-Imap: why don't you use Dovecot?  Its Scheme
> configuration is very nice, and it seems much more popular than
> Courier-Imap anyway.
>
> Also, I would push for a Jabber service rather than an IRC service,
> because Jabber (XMPP) is decentralized.

And there’s also a Prosody service already.

It looks like with current GuixSD you could already get a simple
‘operating-system’ declaration with OpenSMPTD, Dovecot, and Prosody that
does a big chunk of the job!

Ludo’.