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configuring-playbook-bridge-postmoogle.md

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Setting up Postmoogle email bridging (optional)

Note: email bridging can also happen via the email2matrix bridge supported by the playbook.

The playbook can install and configure Postmoogle for you.

Postmoogle is a bridge you can use to have its bot user forward emails to Matrix rooms. It runs an SMTP email server and allows you to assign mailbox addresses to the rooms.

See the project's documentation to learn what it does and why it might be useful to you.

Prerequisites

Open the following ports on your server to be able to receive incoming emails:

  • 25/tcp: SMTP
  • 587/tcp: Submission (TLS-encrypted SMTP)

If you don't open these ports, you will still be able to send emails, but not receive any.

These port numbers are configurable via the matrix_postmoogle_smtp_host_bind_port and matrix_postmoogle_submission_host_bind_port variables, but other email servers will try to deliver on these default (standard) ports, so changing them is of little use.

Adjusting the playbook configuration

Add the following configuration to your inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml file:

matrix_postmoogle_enabled: true

# Uncomment and adjust this part if you'd like to use a username different than the default
# matrix_postmoogle_login: postmoogle

# Generate a strong password for the bot. You can create one with a command like `pwgen -s 64 1`.
matrix_postmoogle_password: PASSWORD_FOR_THE_BOT

# Uncomment to add one or more admins to this bridge:
#
# matrix_postmoogle_admins:
#  - '@yourAdminAccount:{{ matrix_domain }}'
#
# .. unless you've made yourself an admin of all bots/bridges like this:
#
# matrix_admin: '@yourAdminAccount:{{ matrix_domain }}'

Adjusting DNS records

You will also need to add several DNS records so that Postmoogle can send emails. See Configuring DNS for details about DNS changes.

Installing

After configuring the playbook, run it with playbook tags as below:

ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts setup.yml --tags=setup-all,ensure-matrix-users-created,start

Notes:

  • The ensure-matrix-users-created playbook tag makes the playbook automatically create a user account of the bridge's bot.

  • The shortcut commands with the just program are also available: just install-all or just setup-all

    just install-all is useful for maintaining your setup quickly (2x-5x faster than just setup-all) when its components remain unchanged. If you adjust your vars.yml to remove other components, you'd need to run just setup-all, or these components will still remain installed.

  • If you change the bridge's bot password (matrix_postmoogle_password in your vars.yml file) subsequently, the bot user's credentials on the homeserver won't be updated automatically. If you'd like to change the bot user's password, use a tool like synapse-admin to change it, and then update matrix_postmoogle_password to let the bot know its new password.

Usage

To use the bridge, invite the @postmoogle:example.com bot user into a room you want to use as a mailbox.

Then send !pm mailbox NAME to expose this Matrix room as an inbox with the email address [email protected]. Emails sent to that email address will be forwarded to the room.

Send !pm help to the bot in the room to see the available commands.

You can also refer to the upstream documentation.

Debug/Logs

As with all other services, you can find their logs in systemd-journald by running something like journalctl -fu matrix-postmoogle

The default logging level for this bridge is INFO, but you can increase it to DEBUG with the following additional configuration:

matrix_postmoogle_loglevel: 'DEBUG'