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Topic: Newbie here and questions

==== REQUIRED BASIC INFO OF YOUR IREDMAIL SERVER ====
- iRedMail version:  Whatever is stable when I install
- Deployed with iRedMail Easy or the downloadable installer? downloadable
- Linux/BSD distribution name and version: target is AlmaLinux 9.1
- Store mail accounts in which backend (LDAP/MySQL/PGSQL): probably MySQL
- Web server (Apache or Nginx): TBD
- Manage mail accounts with iRedAdmin-Pro? TBD
- [IMPORTANT] newbie questions
====

I have been running my own email server for some 10 years based on postfix, dovecot, mysql, and PostfixAdmin and it is past time to get out of the business of trying to roll my own.  Thus I am here.

My current setup has maildir in /home/vmail/domain

I am buying an HP Proliant gen10+ microserver with RAID1 and 2 sets of 4TB drives.  Quite overkill on drive size, but what are you going to do to get enterprise reliable drives?

I figure that AlmaLinux and iRedMail will go on one set of drives and I see from the docs that mail is in /var/vmail?  And that is all on the 2nd set?

Is it worth putting any other structure on the "data" drive?  Very little activity on the user admin so I am assuming that the mysql stuff is stable.  Only logs will be typically going crazy active.

Anyway.

1) only /var/vmail on data drive
2) or also daily rsync of configs to a /backup/.... dir on data drive (or also offsite)
3) migration per domain is rsync oldserver:/home/vmail/domain newserver:/var.vmail/domain

IPv6 question:  My AT&T fiber does not guarantee stability of an IPv6 addr.  I DO pay for static IPv4.  Is there some way to use the IPv6 addr assigned when I cannot set up the reverse addr PTR for that addr (I can with some challenge with my IPv4 addrs).

Thank you.  If this works, I will be hanging around!

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Spider Email Archiver: On-Premises, lightweight email archiving software developed by iRedMail team. Supports Amazon S3 compatible storage and custom branding.

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Re: Newbie here and questions

rgmhtt wrote:

1) only /var/vmail on data drive

Mostly, not only.

/var/vmail contains mailboxes, backup SQL databases (dumped as SQL file), PGP keys, mailing lists, etc.

Some applications may have its own directory structure, for example, config files are usually placed inside application directory itself. e.g. Roundcube is installed under /opt/www/roundcubemail-x.y.z/, main config files are placed under /opt/www/roundcubemail-x.y.z/config/, plugin config files are placed under each plugin directory like /opt/www/roundcubemail-x.y.z/plugins/<PLUGIN-NAME>/config.inc.php.

FYI https://docs.iredmail.org/backup.restore.html

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Re: Newbie here and questions

rgmhtt wrote:

2) or also daily rsync of configs to a /backup/.... dir on data drive (or also offsite)

iRedMail installer doesn't know the backup method and destination, and mailbox size is growing fast on busy server which is not good to backup mailboxes under /var/vmail/backup/, so there's no daily cron job to backup mailboxes.

rgmhtt wrote:

3) migration per domain is rsync oldserver:/home/vmail/domain newserver:/var.vmail/domain

For mailboxes, it's ok. But please make sure the maildir path stored in SQL db (table "vmail.mailbox") matches the directories on disk, otherwise you cannot find copied messages after logged in to IMAP/POP3.

rgmhtt wrote:

IPv6 question:  My AT&T fiber does not guarantee stability of an IPv6 addr.  I DO pay for static IPv4.  Is there some way to use the IPv6 addr assigned when I cannot set up the reverse addr PTR for that addr (I can with some challenge with my IPv4 addrs).

iRedMail detects IPv6 on your server during installation, it enables IPv6 support in Nginx (web) / Dovecot (pop3/imap) / Postfix (smtp) if IPv6 is available.

iRedMail doesn't configure Nginx/Dovecot/Postfix to bind to existing IPv4/6 addresses by default, so you're free to change the addresses. Just don't forget to update DNS records for your server hostname and email domain names when IP is changed.