I’m thinking of putting all my email archive (55k messages, about 6 GB) on a private IMAP server but I’m wondering how to access it remotely when needed.

Obviously I’d need a webmail client but is there any that can deal with that amount of data and also be able to search through To, From, Subject and body efficiently?

I can also set up a standalone search engine of some sort (the messages are stored one per file in regular folders) but then how do I view the message once I locate it?

I can also expose the IMAP server itself and see if I can find a mobile app that fits the bill but I’d rather not do that. A webmail client would be much easier to reverse proxy and protect.

  • mbirth@lemmy.mbirth.ukEnglish
    3·
    5 months ago

    I’ve setup Dovecot and Solr in Docker containers for the IMAP end. Solr provides a fulltext search for Dovecot. I’ve also configured a virtual “All Mail” folder that shows all the messages on the server - to help with clients that don’t support search in all folders.

    As webmail client, I’m using SnappyMail and let it search the “All Mail” folder.

    See also: https://blog.cloudron.io/email-search-in-mail-clients/