mail client autoconfig?

[perler]

As I only find a very old thread - is mail client autoconfig (thunderbird/outlook etc.) implemented yet or do we still need to do this manually?

[jdaviescoates]

I went to check to see if Thunderbird automatically finds details... but then I discovered a Thunderbird bug where I cannot dismiss reminders and it drove me mad so I gave up, sorry.

But, why don't you just test it yourself and find out?

[perler]

I feel you, try creating accounts with unusual settings, the UI wildly changes entered values when pressing save or test buttons, a true maniac must have designed it.

anyways, the devs should know?

[jdaviescoates]

@perler In the end I managed to test Thunderbird and I'm pleased to report that it did successfully autoconfig everything after I gave it the email and password

[perler]

Ok, here with a newly added domain it doesn't work. There are no DNS entries been set in cloudflare (in this case), so thunderbird tries to "guess" in my case (and fails).

[jdaviescoates]

I'm not using Cloudflare (imho it tends to cause more problems than it solves, and contributes to the centralisation the internet), perhaps that is why mine works?

But also, if it's a newly added domain I guess it may just be a propagation issue?

[fbartels]

The use of autoconfig requires that an app is installed in the root of your domain. See the notes at https://docs.cloudron.io/email/#autoconfigxml

[perler]

ok, but you have such a polished email system - should this not happen automatically?

[robi]

@fbartels should this not be emulatable by a well placed directory in Surfer or WP on the root/bare domain?

[girish]

@perler The bare domain can be used for something else, so this cannot be automated. Maybe domain.com is your website which is hosted outside Cloudron (in which case this is not automatable). If `domain.com is an app on Cloudron, we cannot guess/decide what app the user wants there. Which is why this is not automatic.

[perler]

Ok, TBH I didn't get the "bare/root domain" comment in the first place. For autoconfiguration of mail clients you need these configurations: https://docs.iredmail.org/iredmail-easy.autoconfig.autodiscover.html

as cloudron has control over the NS of the domains hosted we can set these entries (unless they are set already, then we should warn the user) and we can create the nginx docker container serving the autodiscover.xml.

Am I missing something?

[girish]

@perler oh, are you suggesting serving up autoconfig.customer.com automatically ?

Currently, the discovery mechanism is set up to server http://customer.com/.well-known/autoconfig/mail/config-v1.1.xml?emailaddress=user@customer.com in cloudron. That requires us to serve up a document in customer.com (i.e the bare domain). This requires Cloudron to setup customer.com DNS entry to point to Cloudron IP. But we can't do this automatically, because you might be in use outside of cloudron context. Note that a common misunderstanding, if you added customer.com to Cloudron, is that Cloudron "owns" customer.com. This is not true. Cloudron only manipulates DNS records of apps and the mail server. Rest are untouched.

For example, my.cloudron.io (our mail server) and cloudron.io (our website) are actually totally different servers. If my.cloudron.io just overwrote cloudron.io to point to the mail server, our website won't work anymore!

Hope that makes sense... I am looking into this autoconfig subdomain though, that seems automatable.

[girish]

Here's a bunch of information I found. There are 3 ways for autoconfig (k9 issue

• Microsoft way- https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc511507.aspx
• Thunderbird way - https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Autoconfiguration
• DNS way (Apple?) - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6186 . There is some concers here wrt validation of the records + DNSSEC . See also https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=342242 . CalDav and CardDav is via https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6764 .

I am yet to find mail clients that use DNS SRV records. So, at this point, only adding an autoconfig subdomain automatically makes sense.

[girish]

Nicely detailed docs here - https://www.axigen.com/documentation/axigen-auto-discovery-p49119962