SoCS hosts a mail server to handle incoming and outgoing mail for the school of computer science. It is hosted at mail.socs.uoguelph.ca which is an alias for owlery.socs.uoguelph.ca. The system primarily handles mail for @socs.uoguelph.ca addresses, but will also process @cis.uoguelph.ca for legacy reasons, and @mail.socs.uoguelph.ca.

The SoCS mail server is configured to use mail.uoguelph.ca as a relay. This CCS hosted server listens with an unauthenticated port 25 SMTP connection for any mail sent from on campus. This ensures that in the event of our server being compromised, CCS IT Security can stop the outbound flow of mail.

Incoming mail sent from a user who is authenticated to mail.socs.uoguelph.ca will be processed automatically. Any mail that come from outside the SoCS mail server is first routed through CCS mail appliance. This is through the MX records for socs.uoguelph.ca which are configured in our LDAP/DNS system. Once mail reaches here, it is processed to ensure no spam/malware and is then forwarded to mail.socs.uoguelph.ca for delivery.

Postfix is a mail transfer agent and is used for processing and delivering mail. Specific configuration is located in /etc/postfix, but the general setup is a system that allows users to send mail while authenticated with SoCS LDAP credentials via an SMTPS connection.

Dovecot handles IMAP and mailboxes for @socs.uoguelph.ca email addresses that are not otherwise configured. Mail is stored in /home/vmail/<username>. Users can access this mail while authenticated using IMAPS on port 993 and their SoCS LDAP credentials.

Rainloop is a webmail client. It is accessible to anyone with an @socs.uoguelph.ca email address at https://webmail.socs.uoguelph.ca.

Mailman is listserv software. Currently using mailman3 this system is set up to provide mailing lists for various SoCS groups such as staff, faculty and graduate students.

The /etc/aliases file provides aliases to allow mail to be redirect to different addresses. One useful case is to create an email address that is aliased to one or multiple email addresses. The aliases file also manages configuration for the RT-Mailgate for Request Tracker Emails.

Sieve is used to control mail delivery. There is a system-wide file in /var/lib/dovecot/sieve which is used to filter mail to help@socs. Mail sent from an @uog is sent to RT while other addresses get filtered to SoCS IT staff directly.

Some staff accounts are set up using o365 shared mailboxes to allow integration with Office 365 email and calendaring on campus. These allow passwordless authentication based on the user granted access to the mailbox. These must be requested from CCS. There are two parts, the desired email address <address>@socs.uoguelph.ca as well as an internal CCS account name <socsaddress>@uoguelph.ca. In the aliases file there must be an entry from address@socs to socsaddress@uog to ensure mail is correctly routed.