MailServe for Mojave

MailServe helps you set up a fully functional mail server on Mac OS X that can:

• send outgoing mail
• receive incoming mail
• fetch mail from an ISP mail server
• filter out spam
• store all these mail on the server & and allow them to be read them from any mail client
• allow mail to be organised into folders and sub-folders
• authenticate users before they are allowed to send mail through the server
• encrypt mail coming in and out of the server using SSL (including inserting Intermediate CA certs)

MailServe organises each of these tasks—from the simple to the complex—into discrete panels in its user interface. This allows the user to turn the mail services on one-by-one, and turn them off individually when they're not needed.

MailServe does a lot of complicated configuring of your server beneath its Mac-like user interface. It does this in a non-invasive manner, touching as little as possible of the original system files so as to leave your system in its pristine state. And you can remove all the files installed by the MailServe, at one go, using the De-Install option in MailServe's Help menu.

Upgrade Notes, if you’ve used MailServe before and didn’t do a clean install of Mojave:

Once you have launched the latest version of MailServe, save the current config using the File->Save menu item, do a De-Install from the Help menu, which removes all the previous cruft, and then quit and come back to the app. You'll then get the config files, libraries and the other stuff that will work with Mojave.


Installing a Mail Server on OS X - A Step by Step Guide

Step 1—Sending Mail to other Mail Servers, using the Outgoing Panel

Mail servers talk to each other via SMTP. There's an SMTP server, Postfix, built into every Leopard machine. But it needs to be turned on. So, start at this point—at MailServe's Outgoing panel—to turn on that SMTP server. Once it's on, you can use it to send mail to other mail servers, as well as from things like PHP scripts, running on your server. [Details]

Step 2—Receiving Mail from other Mail Servers

The Postfix SMTP server will also receive mail from other servers. But you need to first tell Postfix which domains to receive mail for. You set this up using the Mail Server panel, which also allows you to set up Postfix so it will relay mail for other machines on your network, as well as for remote machines which authenticate. [Details]

Step 3—Setting up POP3 and/or IMAP Servers using Dovecot

Once Mail has been delivered to the Postfix server, you need to have a mechanism whereby mail clients like Mail, Entourage or Thunderbird can access the stored mail. This service is provided by POP3 and IMAP server called Dovecot, not Postfix. IMAP servers have an additional functionality over POP3 servers—they allow the user to organise the messages into a folder/subfolder structure. [Details]

Step 4—Setting up Fetchmail

Fetchmail is useful for people who have many other POP or IMAP servers that they read mail from. Fetchmail can be set up to check these other POP or IMAP servers periodically and download all that mail, consolidating them into one single mailbox on the local server. [Details]

Step 5—Spam Filtering & Mail User Accounts Management

The Spam Panel includes controls for managing spam and setting up user accounts. MailServe uses procmail to integrate Postfix with Dovecot and SpamBayes to implement spam filtering. The mail administrator can set up custom procmail directives to be processed before or after spam processing. [Details]


The Mail Log

The Mail Log Panel provides access to the Postfix, Dovecot and Fetchmail logs as one merged stream. It also shows the current versions of Postfix, Dovecot and Fetchmail that's activated by MailServe.

If you Option-click the Postfix Log button, you can get a list of the currently active Postfix parameters.


The Mail Queue

Use this panel to monitor the mail queue. The Get button retrieves information about messages in the mail queue. You can flush the queue or choose a particular message to delete—useful for when there are messages stuck in the queue.


De-Installing MailServe

You can de-install MailServe by using the menu item, shown below, in the Help menu. It will shut down any mail-related service that is still running, and remove all files installed by MailServe.

MailServe works from its own folder in /usr/local/cutedge/postfix, in which are stuffed the main.cf, master.cf and other files used by Postfix. The original Postfix files in /etc/postfix are left un-touched and so MailServe leaves your system in its original state after de-installation.


Release Log

12.0 October 2nd 2018. MailServe for Mojave released. The current Postfix version on macOS Mojave  is 3.2.2. MailServe includes a new Dovecot binary, version 2.2.36 (1f10bfa63). The Fetchmail version is still 6.3.26+SSL but this is the very latest version.

12.0.1 October 3rd 2018. This version sets the Postfix parameter "smtpd_tls_security_level=may” instead of “encrypt” in master.cf so that the mail server will not insist that clients must commuicate with it via SSL On the client, in Mail.app, set “Allow insecure authentication” to on, for both the Incoming and Outgoinig Mail Server, if you want Mail.app to communicate with the mail server without SSL (e.g., if you don’t have an SSL certificate). To get this new functionality, there’s no need to do a De-Install. Just do a Restart Mail Server.

12.0.2 October 4th 2018. Added a “Use Plain Login” checkbox to the Outgoing Panel (to the outgoing smtp relay host parameters). This is needed, e.g., if the relay host is smtp.gmail.com, which requires the password authentication mechanism to be of type “plain”, or some such similar smtp servers. If you’re having trouble authenticating with a relay host, try with this option set.

12.1.2 March 30th 2019. The log is back. This is the first version of MailServe that includes its own build of Postfix and the SASL authentication libraries. The Postfix and Fetchmail log is now at /var/log/postfix.log. It can be viewed from MailServe’s Log Panel or via the Console app. And it will be rotated automatically so it won’t fill up disk space indefinitely. Dovecot now has its own log at /var/log/dovecot.log. Shift-click on the Get Mail Log button to access the Dovecot log. This will also be automatically rotated. The Postfix version is now 3.4.4. And Dovecot 2.3.5.

Important Tech Note: To upgrade to version 12.1.2, assuming you’ve already opened 12.1.2, first do a Save (config) from the File menu. Then do a De-Install from MailServe’s Help menu. Then do a Open… and open the saved config file. Finally, Start Mail Server.

The serial number & download link will be displayed in the browser after payment, and will also be sent via email.


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MailServe for Mojave

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The latest MailServe for Mojave version is 12.1.2 – The log is back!

For important details of the latest update, please read the Release Log.


Contact
Bernard Teo