Mail Server migration information
As I've mentioned earlier, I'm preparing to replace our mail server with a new one. I've been vague about the details so far, but at this point, it's about ready to go, so it's time to give you a time line and migration instructions.
The time line is quite simple. On Monday, the 6th of October, I am going to flip the switch, and all new mail will go to the new server rather than the current one. The old one will remain available, but it will not be receiving new mail. I will leave the old server around until the end of October, so you can retrieve your old mail. After that, the old server is going to go away, because it's costing us a lot of money to keep it hooked up.
The new mail server has a much nicer web interface, better spam control, easy server-side mail filters, and authenticated outbound mail, all of which should make dealing with it much nicer than the current system. It can also provide calendaring and address book tools, as well as an instant messaging system. Some of the new features require configuration settings I'm not putting in this message. I'll add a page to the web site describing the rest when I get a chance, but if you like feel free to play with it.
Depending on how you read your mail, all this means one of three things.
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If you have your Dingman.org mail forwarded to another e-mail address, you don't need to do anything. The forwarding will keep on working.
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If you use Squirrelmail to read your messages, you need to start checking your mail by visiting https://zimbra.dingman.org/ instead of the old Squirrelmail URL. You will probably also want to migrate your old messages to the new system. (Instructions below)
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If you use something other than Squirrelmail to read your messages, you will need to reconfigure your mail client to use the new server. You will probably also want to migrate your old messages to the new system. You may be able to do this with your mail program if it can handle multiple accounts at the same time, or you may prefer to use the same method I'll describe for doing it through the web interface.
The new settings for your mail client are:
| Username | <whatever_it_is_now>@dingman.org |
| Password | <whatever_it_is_now> |
| IMAP server | zimbra.dingman.org |
| SMTP server | zimbra.dingman.org |
The IMAP server requires either TLS on port 143 OR SSL on port 993. Those are the standard ports, so if your client doesn't mention ports, don't worry about it.
The SMTP server requires SSL on port 465, and you must authenticate to send a message.
Migrating old mail to the new server:
Make sure you do this before the end of October, when the old mail server will go away!
Migrating old mail to the new server can be done by configuring the Zimbra web client to view your old mail as an external account, and then copying messages or folders to the Zimbra account.
Steps 1-8 can be done right now. Don't do steps 9 and 10 until Monday afternoon. If you do, you may lose mail.
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Log in to zimbra.dingman.org using your current username and password
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Click on the "Preferences" tab in Zimbra's top tab bar
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Click on the "Accounts" tab below "Preferences"
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Click on the button labeled "Add External Account", at the right side of the screen
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Fill in the form as follows
Email address <your_username>@bundy.dingman.org Account Name Old Email Account Type IMAP Username of Account <your_username> Email Server bundy.dingman.org Password <your_current_password> Advanced Settings check "Use an encrypted connection (SSL) when accessing this server" Download messages to Folder -
Click "Save" in the blue bar at the top of the screen.
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Click on the "Mail" tab at the top of the screen
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Select the "Old Email" account from the navigation bar at the left side of the screen. That may start downloading your mail, or you may need to click "Get Mail" in the blue bar to start the process. This may be slow, so go ahead and take a break now.
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Once everything shows up under your "Old Email" account, you can drag and drop the folders from there to "Inbox", above, and Zimbra will move your folders from the old server to the new one.
You may find that there are folders you don't know or care about on the old server, such as '.bashrc'. If so, don't worry about them.
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Go back to the account screen, click on your "Old Email" account, and click on the delete button right below it.
Dingman.org Configuration
Configuration information for Dingman.org services
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Passwords
Password changes for e-mail are not currently possible. Your password is unchanged from what it was before. This will be fixed soon.
Passwords can no longer be used to log in to the web server to maintain your personal web site. If you configured SSH key authentication before the migration, it should still work. If not, and you want to, contact Andrew for help setting one up. It's relatively easy, and I can talk you though it.
In the near future, I will make available a web tool for changing your password, and for updating your SSH key. I will link that tool here.
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SSL Certificates
All SSL certificates for Dingman.org services are issued by CACert.org, and therefore may not be trusted by your web browser or other client software automatically. The correct way to fix this is to install the CACert root certificate as a trusted certificate authority. There are two files you'll need for that, their root certificate and their intermediate certificate
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Mail
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Stand-alone client
Username <your_name>@dingman.org Password <your_password> IMAP server zimbra.dingman.org SMTP server zimbra.dingman.org The IMAP server requires either TLS on port 143 OR SSL on port 993. Those are the standard ports, so if your client doesn't mention ports, don't worry about it.
The SMTP server requires SSL on port 465, and you must authenticate to send a message.
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Web mail
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Zimbra Desktop
Pretty much everything except personal web sites can be accessed through a dedicated Zimbra client called Zimbra Desktop. If you're happy with the web mail interface, but want to be able to access mail when you don't have an Internet connection, this would work. So would most mail clients, though. I'm not much of a fan, but configuration is simple. Just tell it you're using a Zimbra server, check off that you want to make a secure connection, and enter "zimbra.dingman.org" as the server name.
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Mobile access
In addition to any of the standard methods your phone may support, Mail, calendar, and possibly other features of the new Zimbra software are available on some mobile phones. The Zimbra native client is available for phones with a Java mobile environment available. If you have such a phone, you can download the client from the Zimbra web site. The server for all services is zimbra.dingman.org.
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Calendars
Calendars set up in Zimbra can be viewed and edited with standard calendar tools. You'll have to use the web mail interface to create or delete them, or to share them with other users.
There are two standard methods for accessing calendar information, ICAL and CalDAV (sometimes called simply WebDAV). Each one uses a URL to describe the calendar. Zimbra supports both.
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ICAL
https://zimbra.dingman.org/home/<username>/Calendar
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CalDAV
https://zimbra.dingman.org/dav/<username>/Calendar
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Instant messaging
The new mail server also provides a chat server using the XMPP protocol, also known as Jabber. It uses zimbra.dingman.org as the only server. In Pidgin, check off "use SSL/TLS" and leave the port at 5222. Other clients may require SSL on port 5223. The file transfer port is 7777 on zimbra.dingman.org.
Your username is your e-mail address, and your password is the same as for e-mail.
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Personal web sites
You can set up a web site at http://www.dingman.org/~yourusername if you want to, still. You'll need to get an SSH key configured, currently only possible by talking to Andrew.