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+# Keeping my email sorted (the hard way)
+
+I have recently made some changes to my email setup.  In this post I'll
+explain the motivation behind these changes and what I did in practice.
+
+## Self-hosting?
+
+When I got my virtual machine up and running at
+[openbsd.amsterdam](https://openbsd.amsterdam/) - the one where this
+website is hosted - I originally planned to host my private email
+server there too.  I knew this was probably a hard task, but you know,
+everything is hard until you learn how to do it.
+
+I wanted to do this for a couple of reasons. The main one was to use my
+`@tronto.net` email address, but I also liked the idea of staying away
+from large internet companies (my main email address was connected to my
+Google account). Not that there is anything inherently wrong with using
+services from this big companies, but I like the idea of not being too
+dependent on them.
+
+After reading
+[a nice tutorial at poolp.org](https://poolp.org/posts/2019-09-14/setting-up-a-mail-server-with-opensmtpd-dovecot-and-rspamd/)
+I was a bit discouraged. The guide was well-written, all the steps seemed
+doable if taken one by one, and I was happy to have dug into this topic
+because I learned a lot. However, an email server apparently consists of
+a lot of moving pieces: an smtp server, spam filter, DNS, DKIM... it is
+a lot to keep track of. Even assuming that I would be able to set this
+thing up AND to keep in mind what each of these pieces does, as soon as a
+problem of any kind arises - config-breaking updates? domain registration
+expiring? me messing up with my VM and making it unreachable? - I knew I
+had to be one to fix the mistake. And I cannot afford to be immediately
+available whenever something bad happens. Sometimes I might just have a
+full week were I don't have time to fiddle around with smtpd and whatnot,
+and I can't afford being unreachable via email for a week.
+
+## My old setup (until September 2022)
+
+Having abandoned the idea of self-hosting, I looked for alternatives. I
+figured that if my goals were just to use my own domain and stay away
+from Google, I could sign up for a smaller email provider that offers
+custom domains. It turns out there are a lot of them. After some careful
+considerations I decided to go with [mailbox.org](https://mailbox.org). I
+like their transparency and privacy focus and the fact that they are
+based in the EU. I pay 3€ per month (the 1€ tier does not offer
+custom domains) and I am happy with their service.
+
+Setting up the server side was quite simle. Using custom domains
+requires a tiny bit of work, but it was all well explained in the
+[FAQs](https://kb.mailbox.org/en/private/custom-domains).
+
+On my local machine I used (and still use) the amazing
+[mblaze](https://github.com/leahneukirchen/mblaze), which is essentially
+[MH](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System)
+for [Maildir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maildir) folders.
+In practice, mblaze is a set of commands to manage emails directly
+from the command line, without using a graphical environment or a
+[TUI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_user_interface) like
+[Mutt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutt_(email_client)).  This system
+is incredibly flexible, check it out if you don't know it!
+
+Being just a mail user agent, mblaze cannot retrieve or send
+email.  These tasks can be accomplished by other small pieces of
+software: I used [msmtp](https://marlam.de/msmtp) for sending
+email and [mpop](https://marlam.de/mpop) for downloading it
+from mailbox.org's server. As the name suggests, mpop uses the
+[POP3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Office_Protocol)
+protocol instead of the more common
+[IMAP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol).
+The main difference is that POP3 simply retrieves your email, while
+IMAP keeps the server and client folders synchronized.  There are many
+advantages and disadvantages to this choice, I won't go into detail on
+them in this post.
+
+As for my other devices, my local mailfolder is kept in sync with my
+server using [syncthing](https://syncthing.net).  I also use an amail
+client on my phone with IMAP, connected directly to the mail server.
+
+## Nitpicking
+
+Since I am subscribed to a couple of high-traffic mailing lists that
+I read just for curiosity, it is necessary for me to have an easy way
+to download and view regular emails separately from that coming from
+mailing lists.
+
+This was kinda easy to set up with mpop's filters, but my configuration
+was a bit of a hack.  One disadvantage of this soution was that it
+only solved the problem on my laptop(s). On my webmail and on my phone,
+my inbox was a complete mess of mailing lists, newsletter and a few
+important emails.
+
+After thinking about it for a while I figured that an elegant solution
+would be to set up alternative email addresses for receiving mailing
+list emails, like `list@tronto.net`.  Then I would manage those different
+mailboxes separately.
+
+Setting the aliases up on mailbox.org was easy, but unfortunately all my
+`@tronto.net` address used the same inbox, so I did not solve any problem
+at all. I could add some sub-folders and set up filters so that incoming
+mail gets sorted out, but the app on my phone could not read sub-folders
+and mailbox did not allow top-level folders (or I could not find a way to
+create them). Besides, tinkering with IMAP folders was not something
+that I found particularly exciting.
+
+But there was another solution...
+
+## My current setup (since September 2022)
+
+I decided to try and redirect the mailing list emails to my personal
+server. Configuring OpenBSD's smtp to receive emails from one specific
+outside source (my mailbox.org account) and sort them into some local
+folders is order of magnitudes easier than setting up a full-fledged
+email server. No problems with DKIM, no incoming spam, no nothing.
+
+It took me a few hours to figure our how to do this, but in the
+end it is just a matter of configuring a few filters on mailbox.org
+and adding a couple of lines to `/etc/mail/stmp.conf`.
+
+### mailbox.org filters
+
+On my mailbox.org webmail I simply set up a filter to redirect any email
+sent to `list@example.com` (a made-up name for the mailing list I am
+subscribed to) to my private server. No copy of these emails is kept on
+the server, so they don't clutter my normal (IMAP) inbox. I risk missing
+a few of these emails if my server goes down, but it is a public mailing
+list and I can always check the archives online.
+
+I could not just send these emails to `something@tronto.net`, otherwise
+they would simply be taken care of by mailbox - the MX records for my
+domain point to their servers. But it turns out you can send mail to
+a server using its IP address, as long as the server is configured to
+accept such mail. So I set up the redirects to `list@[46.23.91.214]` -
+where `46.23.91.214` is the IP address of my server.
+
+### smtpd.conf
+
+The second step is configuring smtpd, OpenBSD's default mail server
+daemon, to deal with incoming email.
+
+First of all we need to list the virtual user `list` in
+`/etc/mail/aliases` so that any mail sent to it is interpreted as being
+sent to my regular user.
+
+```
+# cat 'list: sebastiano' >> /etc/mail/aliases
+```
+
+Then we have to change the line `listen on lo0` to `listen on all`
+in `/etc/smtp.conf`.
+
+Then we need to add an `action` and a `match` lines to the same file:
+
+```
+# cat << EOF >> /etc/mail/smtpd.conf
+> action "list" maildir "~/mail/list" alias <aliases>
+> match from any for rcpt-to "list@[46.23.91.214]" action "list"
+> EOF
+```
+
+And finally restart smtpd with `rcctl restart smtpd`.
+
+This does the trick: now all email I receive from the `list@example.com`
+mailing list is redirected by my mailbox account to my private server,
+where smtpd takes care of sending it to the mail directory `~/mail/list`.
+
+### No mpop needed
+
+Once the mail is delivered to `~/mail/list`, I can get it from there
+to my laptop in any way I like - for example using syncthing, like I
+do for all my important files. In this way the mailing list emails are
+regularly downloaded and kept in sync, and I don't need to use mpop to
+retrieve them.
+
+This is quite convenient, one less piece of software to keep track of!
+In fact, I can do the same for all other email I receive. I just need
+to set up the appropriate rules on mailbox: this time I want the mail
+to be sent to `sebastiano@[46.23.91.214]` and *a copy to be kept on the
+mailbox.org server*, so that I can easily access it from my phone's app as
+well.  Then I add two slightly different lines to `/etc/mail/smtpd.conf`:
+
+```
+# cat << EOF >> /etc/mail/smtpd.conf
+> action "seb" maildir "~/mail/inbox" user sebastiano
+> match from any for rcpt-to "sebastiano@[46.23.91.214]" action "seb"
+> EOF
+```
+
+And the new setup is ready!
+
+### Sending email
+
+I did not change the way I send email: I still use msmtp.
+
+## Happy now?
+
+Yes, this new setup works and I am always happy when things work.
+Of course, one might make the case that things worked before as well...
+
+I am happy that I could work my way around a basic smtpd configuration.
+Besides being useful knowledge on its own, it may make a second attempt
+at self-hosting my email less daunting. I don't know if I am ever going
+to try that, though.