Setting up Postmoogle (optional)

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

The playbook can install and configure Postmoogle for you.

It's a bot/bridge you can use to forward emails to Matrix rooms. Postmoogle runs an SMTP email server and allows you to assign mailbox addresses to Matrix rooms.

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

Prerequisites

Networking

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_bot_postmoogle_smtp_host_bind_port and matrix_bot_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.DOMAIN/vars.yml file:

matrix_bot_postmoogle_enabled: true

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

# Generate a strong password here. Consider generating it with `pwgen -s 64 1`
matrix_bot_postmoogle_password: PASSWORD_FOR_THE_BOT

# Uncomment to add one or more admins to this bridge:
#
# matrix_bot_postmoogle_admins:
#  - '@yourAdminAccount:domain.com'
#
# .. unless you've made yourself an admin of all bridges like this:
#
# matrix_admin: '@yourAdminAccount:domain.com'

DNS

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

Installing

After configuring the playbook, run the installation command again:

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 the bot's user account
if you change the bot password (matrix_bot_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_bot_postmoogle_password to let the bot know its new password

Usage

To use the bot, invite the @postmoogle:DOMAIN 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 NAME@matrix.domain. Emails sent to that email address will be forwarded to the room.

Send !pm help to the room to see the bot's help menu for additional 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-bot-postmoogle

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

matrix_bot_postmoogle_loglevel: 'DEBUG'

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