Archiving Emails from a Postfix Based Email Server
Please note: This tutorial only covers the specifics of archiving an email server based on the mail transfer agent Postfix. It is assumed that you already have a MailStore Server installation or test installation and are familiar with the fundamentals of MailStore Server. Please refer to the Manual or Quick Start Guide for more information.
MailStore Server offers several ways to archive emails from an email server, which are described below. If you are not sure which archiving method best suits your company, please refer to chapter Choosing the Right Archiving Strategy.
Synchronizing Users
Alternatively to local file-based user databases, an email server based on the mail transfer agent Postfix may use SQL databases or LDAP directory services to manage and authenticate users. As MailStore Server also supports Active Directory and other LDAP directory services (e.g. OpenLDAP) you can find additional information on synchronizing users in the corresponding chapters of the MailStore Server manual:
Note: When you are batch-archiving IMAP mailboxes, MailStore Server automatically creates non-existing users. The authentication type of those users will be MailStore-integrated.
Archiving Individual Mailboxes
Mail transfer agents such as Postfix are only responsible for transporting emails and, when acting as mail delivery agent, for the delivery to local mailboxes. For accessing the emails in the mailboxes with MailStore, an IMAP- or POP3 service (called mail retrieval agent) must be installed and started on the email server. If access to the email server via the IMAP and/or POP3 protocol is possible, please refer to the corresponding chapter Archiving Server Mailboxes in the MailStore Server manual to set up the archiving process.
Archiving Multiple Mailboxes in One Step
Mail transfer agents such as Postfix are only responsible for transporting emails and, when acting as mail delivery agent, for the delivery to local mailboxes. For accessing the emails in the mailboxes with MailStore, an IMAP- or POP3 service (called mail retrieval agent) has to be installed and started on the email server. If access to the email server via the IMAP protocol is possible, please refer to the corresponding chapter Batch-archiving IMAP Mailboxes in the MailStore Server manual to set up the archiving process.
Archiving Incoming and Outgoing Emails Directly
When archiving emails during sending and receiving, it is recommended to have Postfix, in addition to delivering the messages to their respective user mailboxes, send a copy of all emails to an archiving mailbox. This requires the following changes to be made to the Postfix configuration:
Step 1: Set up an Archiving Mailbox
Create a new user for the mailbox. Depending on the environment, this can be a Unix system user or a user in a directory service. Assign an email address to this user, e.g. [email protected]. To have Postfix send a copy of all emails to this mailbox, you need to add the following line to the file main.cf:
always_bcc = [email protected]
Step 2: Configuration of MailStore Server
Configure MailStore to archive the new mailbox in regular intervals (e.g. daily at 11pm) using an archiving task of type IMAP multidrop profile.
After archiving, emails can and should be deleted from the mailbox automatically by MailStore Server. The MailStore archiving task can be configured accordingly.
Please note: In this case, the email address [email protected] must not be assigned to any MailStore user.
