# Use aliases in iRedMail for categories with incoming email feature enabled
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/use-aliases-in-iredmail-for-categories-with-incoming-email-feature-enabled/123012
**Category:** Sysadmins
**Tags:** how-to
**Created:** [7월 15, 2019, 9:30오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/use-aliases-in-iredmail-for-categories-with-incoming-email-feature-enabled/123012 "2019-07-15T21:30:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Ivan\_Rapekas](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ivan_Rapekas)
#### Post date: [7월 15, 2019, 9:30오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/use-aliases-in-iredmail-for-categories-with-incoming-email-feature-enabled/123012/1 "2019-07-15T21:30:48Z")
> 📣 WARNING – this topic is very specific to a particular rare use case and is likely not what you should be doing. Refer to the first two links, below, for the recommended setup.
## Prerequisities
I searched the forum for a clear article on how to setup a ticket system using Discourse and found some brilliant topics:
1. [Configuring incoming email to create new topics or group messages](https://meta.discourse.org/t/start-a-new-topic-via-email-e-mail/62977)
2. [Use Discourse as a Private Support/Ticket System](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-use-discourse-as-a-private-support-ticket-system/72268)
## Questions
Unfortunately, I am not enough familiar with some mail server features, and I don’t know how to configure the support of `reply+mailbox@server.com` or `somerandomcode+mailbox@server.com`. How does it work at all, omg? 🤦♂️
How can I use multiple emails assigned to different categories? How does it work if the forum settings support only one email address?
Yes, it works perfectly. Based on those two howtos I understood the principles of incoming emailing and proper forum settings. As previously mentioned, the main in mail server’s forwarding feature.
## Basic fully-functional mail server
For those who want to setup a zero-cost mail server I recommend **iRedMail**
- [Here](https://www.linuxbabe.com/mail-server/ubuntu-16-04-iredmail-server-installation) it is an article to setup a mail server based on ubuntu + postfix + iredmail _in English_
- [here](https://www.dmosk.ru/instruktions.php?object=iredmail-centos7) the same for centos _in Russian_
## Mail aliases
After a default installation, you get mail server ready to connect to Discourse. Follow steps 1 and 2 above and next steps how to use mail aliases in iRedMail.
For example, you created mailbox `master@server.com` and two categories:
```plaintext
feature
feature -> internal [private]
```
You need to use your mailbox credentials in pop polling settings.
Connect to your server shell, use user postgres and connect to the database (I use postgres):
```plaintext
ssh login@server.com
sudo su - postgres
psql
```
Then switch to `vmail` schema and create _two aliases_:
```plaintext
postgres=# \c vmail
postgres=# INSERT INTO alias (address, domain, active)
VALUES ('feat@server.com', 'server.com', 1);
postgres=# INSERT INTO alias (address, domain, active)
VALUES ('staff@server.com', 'server.com', 1);
```
Next step you create forwardings:
```plaintext
postgres=# INSERT INTO forwardings (address, forwarding,
domain, dest_domain,
is_list, active)
VALUES ('feat@server.com', 'master@server.com',
'server.com', 'server.com', 1, 1);
postgres=# INSERT INTO forwardings (address, forwarding,
domain, dest_domain,
is_list, active)
VALUES ('staff@server.com', 'master@server.com',
'server.com', 'server.com', 1, 1);
postgres=# \q OR CTRL+D to exit
```
You may check two tables, aliases and forwardings in your favorite DB manager:
Pay attention to active key, it must be 1.
## Check settings
Assign email aliases to categories and sent email from the email of your registered user. If necessary, you may allow anonymous emailing and auto-creating staged users by the following settings:
- Accept emails from anonymous users with no accounts (optional, category setting)
- enable staged users (if true, check `approve unless staged` as well )
- pop3 polling enabled = true
- pop3 polling host (your host FQDN)
- pop3 polling port (usually 995)
- pop3 polling username (`master@server.com`)
- pop3 polling password
- pop3 polling delete from server (optional, I leave as disabled to have the original message in my mail client)
- log mail processing failures (optional, because you can monitor all events at Emails tab)
- email in = true
- email in min trust (I use 0 at first after starting my forum, also check `clean up inactive users after days`)
- email prefix (optional, if your site title has CAPSED name, it may add spam score to auto-replies)
- enable forwarded emails (optional, it is still BETA in 2.4.0beta2, sometimes it cannot find email body)
## Check incoming emails
Send emails to your aliases and check:
```plaintext
/admin/email/received
/admin/email/rejected
```
Now all emails sent both to `master@server.com, feat@server.com OR staff@server.com` will put into one mailbox `master@server.com`. The difference is - mails sent to `feat@` will be processed by `feature` category, mails sent to `staff@` will be processed by `internal`.
Ensure that new topics have appeared! ☀
## Some notes
- Even you assign primary email `master@` to some public or private category, all emails will be processed in the right way (no duplicates, no reveal privacy)
- The setting `min topic title length` does not affect the length of email subject.
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [7월 15, 2019, 9:45오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/use-aliases-in-iredmail-for-categories-with-incoming-email-feature-enabled/123012/2 "2019-07-15T21:45:12Z")
> [@Ivan\_Rapekas](#):
>
> For those who want to setup a zero-cost mail server I recommend **iRedMail**
The one I recommend is [Configure direct-delivery incoming email for self-hosted sites with Mail-Receiver](https://meta.discourse.org/t/straightforward-direct-delivery-incoming-mail/49487). You don’t need to configure much more than a couple things to set it up and after that you can just use whatever email addresses for groups or categories and it will Just Work.
---
### Author:  [@Ivan\_Rapekas](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ivan_Rapekas)
#### Post date: [7월 15, 2019, 9:55오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/use-aliases-in-iredmail-for-categories-with-incoming-email-feature-enabled/123012/3 "2019-07-15T21:55:42Z")
Thanks for sharing @pfaffman, I did not find that topic. I am old-school guy, therefore I trust the proven schemes used in production. I just suggest rather fast and stable solution. Also I did not find any mention of word **alias** in relevant search results. So let it be in this howto).
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [7월 15, 2019, 10:16오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/use-aliases-in-iredmail-for-categories-with-incoming-email-feature-enabled/123012/4 "2019-07-15T22:16:52Z")
> [@Ivan\_Rapekas](#):
>
> I am old-school guy, therefore I trust the proven schemes used in production.
To each his own, but for handling incoming mail to Discourse a container running Postfix is a pretty proven solution. It’s hard to imagine that iRedMail could be faster or more stable, if only because iRedMail includes a **bunch** of components that you don’t need if all you want to do it get mail delivered to Discourse.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [7월 16, 2019, 1:53오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/use-aliases-in-iredmail-for-categories-with-incoming-email-feature-enabled/123012/5 "2019-07-16T01:53:23Z")
This topic is OK but _highly_ specific to your rather unusual use case. I’m adding a warning to the top of the topic to that effect.