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[exim-config] / README

The =distorted.org.uk= mail system

* Delivery

The mail delivery agent is Exim.  If you don't do anything special, mail
is delivered into =/var/mail/USER= on stratocaster, in mbox format.

There are a number of ways you can affect mail delivery.

** The =~/.forward= file

In traditional Unix style, you can write delivery instructions into a
file named =.forward= in your home directory.  This file can contain a
comma-separated list of email address and/or file or directory names to
which your mail should be sent.  Mail is written to files in traditional
Unix `mbox' format, and to directories in `Maildir' format.  The
=:fail:= and =:defer:= items are permitted, but may not be very useful.

This file can instead be an Exim or Sieve filter file, as marked by a
special comment on the first line.  See the document `Exim's interfaces
to mail filtering', available via the command =info filter=, for details
about these files.

** The =~/.mail/forward= file

If you prefer, you can write delivery instructions to =~/.mail/forward=
instead.  If you have lots of mail configuration files, you may find it
tidier to keep them all together in =~/.mail/=.

** The =~/.mail/forward.suffix= file

You will receive mail sent to =USER@distorted.org.uk=.  You can also
receive mail sent to =USER-SUFFIX@distorted.org.uk= or
=USER+SUFFIX@distorted.org.uk=, for any =SUFFIX= string if you create a
file =~/.mail/forward.suffix=.  While this can be a simple forward file,
it's probably much more useful to write an Exim filter file to analyse
the suffix string and take appropriate action.

If this file exists, it should be world-readable, because it will be
used by the mail server at SMTP time in order to decide whether a
particular =SUFFIX= string is valid.

** Permissions for filter files

Your various filter files are used by Exim's SMTP server, which runs as
an unprivileged user =Debian-exim= for security reasons.  Therefore your
filter files must be readable by this user.  Currently, the only way to
do this is to make the filter files world-readable.  If this is
unsatisfactory for some reason I'll try to come up with a way to arrange
privacy for your filters.


* Reading mail

** Reading mail locally

The servers =stratocaster= and =jem= have a few mail user agents
installed, most notably trad BSD =mail=, =mutt=, and Emacs's various
mail-reading interfaces; more can be added.  Your mail is delivered to
=/var/mail/USER=; any further arrangements, e.g., multiple folders, are
left to you.

** Fetching mail through IMAP

There's an IMAP server running on =mail.distorted.org.uk=.  It expects
your main inbox to be in =/var/mail/USER=, and further folders are put
in =~/mail/=, in mbox format.

The IMAP server listens on ports 143 (plain IMAP) and 993 (IMAP over
TLS).  In the former case, you'll have to configure your client to send
=STARTTLS=, because the server simply won't allow non-encrypted
communication.

The server's certificate is signed by my certificate authority, whose
own certificate can be fetched from
https://www.distorted.org.uk/ca/ca.cert.  (The web server's certificate
is signed by the StartCom Class 1 CA, which should be in most browser's
certificate stores.)  I issue new short-term certificates daily, so
telling your mail client to pin the certificate won't help.  (The public
key doesn't change, though, so if you can do public-key pinning you'll
be OK.)

** Forwarding mail off-site

You can redirect all of your mail to some other site if you prefer to
consolidate it: just write the destination mailbox to =~/.forward=.
Everything else is left to you.


* Sending mail

** The =sendmail= program

Exim provides a =/usr/sbin/sendmail= program with a plausible interface,
and most traditional Unix programs will use this by default to send
mail.

** SMTP to =localhost=

Another traditional way of submitting mail is by connecting to port 25
on the loopback address 127.0.0.1 and speaking SMTP.  This will work on
most servers, and you will be authenticated automatically using the
system's =identd=.  NB: servers other than stratocaster won't
understand unusual domains.

** The Submission protocol

The `modern' way to submit mail involves connecting to port 587 on the
=mail.distorted.org.uk= (the `submission' service) and speaking SMTP.
If you use this service, then (a) you must tell your client to send
=STARTTLS=, and (b) you will have to provide a user name and password.

As with IMAP, the SMTP server's certificate is signed by the
=distorted.org.uk= CA; see above.

** Sender authenticity

It is my intention that it be very hard for one =distorted.org.uk= user
to impersonate another to a third.  To this end, the mail server is
rather picky about envelope sender addresses.

  + It won't accept an apparently local sender address from an external
    mail server at all.

  + It will check locally submitted mail against the submitter's user
    name.  The precise details vary according to the submission
    mechanism: mail submitted through =sendmail= will have additional
    headers added; mail submitted through SMTP will be rejected unless
    the envelope sender is acceptable.

If I see something like DKIM catching on then this will also provide
external users with some kind of (probably fairly weak) sender
authenticity.

On the other hand, the mail server is aware of vanity domains, extension
addresses, and so on, and should let you send mail apparently from an
such an address that you control.  If you think the mail server is being
unnecessarily strict about something then I'm willing to discuss your
requirements.

If I'm hosting your mail domain for you then you get to decide the
appropriate policy.


* Chopwood, and passwords

Users don't have login passwords on =distorted.org.uk= machines; but the
SMTP and IMAP services require user names and passwords, which are
managed using the `Chopwood' service (whose name is `chpwd' -- short for
`change password' -- with some additional vowels).

You can communicate with Chopwood in three different ways.

  1. Using Userv.  On stratocaster, run =userv chpwd help= for a list
     of commands.

  2. Using SSH.  You will need to send me an SSH public key (or
     several), which I'll install for you.  Then you'll be able to run
     =ssh chpwd@stratocaster.distorted.org.uk help= for a list of
     commands, as for Userv.  (This is mainly intended for people who
     don't have login accounts.)

  3. Using the web interface.  Point your browser at
     =https://www.distorted.org.uk/chpwd/=.  For this, you'll need a
     user name and password for Chopwood itself: if you have a local
     login, you can set this up yourself using Userv (say); otherwise
     I'll generate a password for you and send it to you.

If you're using Userv or SSH, you can list which password-using services
you have accounts with the =list= command, and request new passwords
with =reset=, which prints the new password to stdout; the =clear=
command will disable a service's password, preventing you from logging
in at all.  There is a command =set= for setting a password that you
choose, but that's disabled as a matter of local policy: it's possible
that I can be persuaded to enable it, but not very likely.  Note that
you can reset several services' passwords with the same command, and
this will use the same (freshly generated) password for all of them.
For example,

: userv chpwd reset smtp imap

will generate a new password which will work both with the SMTP
submission service and the IMAP server.

Similar functionality is available through the web interface.


* Spam filtering

The mail server checks incoming mail using SpamAssassin at SMTP time.
Suspected spam is rejected immediately.  There are no `junk' mail
folders.  Legitimate senders will likely receive bounces; spammers will
probably ignore the error and continue.

** SpamAssassin

SpamAssassin works by having a large collection of rules: it tests an
incoming message against these rules, and adds up the /scores/ for the
rules that match.  If the total score is above a given threshold then
the message is declared to be probably spam, and rejected.

If the mail server accepts a message, it adds two headers to it.

  + =X-SpamAssassin-Score= has the form =SCORE/LIMIT (BAR)=, where
    =SCORE= is the actual score for the message, =LIMIT= is the maximum
    score allowed, and =BAR= is a little bar chart showing the score in
    a way which can be matched easily using regular expressions.  The
    bar chart uses =+= or =-= signs, depending on whether the score is
    positive or negative, or consists of a single =/= sign if it's close
    to zero.

  + =X-SpamAssassin-Status= consists of space-separated =KEY=VAUE=
    pairs.  The keys currently are: =score= and =limit=, which are the
    message's score and limit again; and =tests=, which lists the rules
    which matched the message and their individual scores, as a
    comma-separated list of items of the form =RULE:SCORE=.

** Custom spam limits

The default spam limit is currently 5 points.  However, you can override
this limit for mail sent to you by creating a world-readable file
=~/.mail/spam-limit= in your home directory on stratocaster.  This file
should contain lines of the form

: PATTERN: LIMIT

where =PATTERN= is an Exim =nwildlsearch= pattern matched against a
string of the form =RECIPIENT/SENDER=, and the =LIMIT= is ten times the
maximum SpamAssassin score you're willing to tolerate for this message.
See the Exim manual for full details; in short, the pattern may be a
literal string, a string beginning with a =*= to match a particular
suffix (usually a sender address or domain, which is why the sender is
on the right), or a Perl-style regular expression starting with =^=.

You may not want information about who is sending you spam (or honest
but spamlike mail) to be public knowledge, so instead you can make a
file =~/.mail/spam-limit.userv= of the same format.  This file need not
be readable by anyone other than you.

Be careful with this facility: if a single incoming message has multiple
recipients, and they assign it different spam score limits (either
explicitly, or implicitly by accepting the system default) then the
sender will be told to defer delivery to some recipients.  It's
therefore probably a bad idea to apply custom spam score limits for mail
for popular mailing lists, for example.

** SAUCE

I'm not currently running SAUCE, but I'm giving it some consideration.
If you have comments on the matter, either way, I'm interested.


* Mail hosting and custom domains

I think I have a fairly sane way to set up stratocaster (or some other
server, but strat is the obvious choice) to receive mail for domains
other than =distorted.org.uk=.  I can easily arrange to accept mail for
such domains and deliver them locally or to other hosts.  Pester me if
this sounds useful to you.

* COMMENT Emacs cruft

#+LaTeX_CLASS: strayman

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