Multibox DeltaChat progress!

nathan commented

2026-04-02 19:30:32 +00:00

Owner

Multibox achieved... pi3 <---> pi4 with different configured hostnames, connecting over ethernet LAN

the devices are different wifi hotspots, but they are plugged into the same ethernet LAN for inter-box communication
you could setup the boxes to be wifi clients and connect to eachother now and then to for mail delivery purely over wifi
i had to make manual changes for this to work

the boxes didn't do mdns name lookup, so "butterbox.local" and "theotherbox.local" didn't automatically find eachother
I use "ip addr" to find the local eth0 address, and then added that into the /etc/hosts file on the other box so they can find eachother by hostname
then i had to add to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default and entry for /mxdeliv that pointed to the localhost 8081 port
i will put this into ticket for Ana
with these changes, the box could find the other box for mail delivery, and then the nginx server coudl handle the incoming http mail delivery HTTP request, and route it to the local madmail 8081 port
also, the madmail server needs to be restarted after every boot 'systemctl restart madmail'
also btw this is a pi3 and a pi4 - nice it works on both.
also my one phone, has accounts on both butterbox instance, and i can easily switch between both to send messages to different people
this can also work multibox with the travel router extenders, since that just established a large LAN network repeater... we just need to get the nginx config fix in, and ideally enable mdns on the pis, so they can autodiscover hostnames

Multibox achieved... pi3 <---> pi4 with different configured hostnames, connecting over ethernet LAN the devices are different wifi hotspots, but they are plugged into the same ethernet LAN for inter-box communication you could setup the boxes to be wifi clients and connect to eachother now and then to for mail delivery purely over wifi i had to make manual changes for this to work the boxes didn't do mdns name lookup, so "butterbox.local" and "theotherbox.local" didn't automatically find eachother I use "ip addr" to find the local eth0 address, and then added that into the /etc/hosts file on the other box so they can find eachother by hostname then i had to add to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default and entry for /mxdeliv that pointed to the localhost 8081 port i will put this into ticket for Ana with these changes, the box could find the other box for mail delivery, and then the nginx server coudl handle the incoming http mail delivery HTTP request, and route it to the local madmail 8081 port also, the madmail server needs to be restarted after every boot 'systemctl restart madmail' also btw this is a pi3 and a pi4 - nice it works on both. also my one phone, has accounts on both butterbox instance, and i can easily switch between both to send messages to different people this can also work multibox with the travel router extenders, since that just established a large LAN network repeater... we just need to get the nginx config fix in, and ideally enable mdns on the pis, so they can autodiscover hostnames

acute commented

2026-04-03 12:29:11 +00:00

Owner

Sep 03 18:40:02 butterbox bash[1106]: Now at setting: enable_deltachat
Sep 03 18:40:02 butterbox bash[1106]: Service madmail not found
^
I re-created your test, it looks like the madmail installer adds a service file, but it's not picked up by systemctl immediately (I guess it requires a daemon-reload) and the script that enables it never finds it after the first setup.

So after a reboot, as soon as any setting requiring restart is changed, this gets set correctly:

Sep 03 19:42:54 butterbox bash[697]: Now at setting: enable_deltachat
Sep 03 19:42:55 butterbox bash[697]: Service madmail has been enabled.

I will add running 'systemctl daemon-reload' to one of the scripts.

Sep 03 18:40:02 butterbox bash[1106]: Now at setting: enable_deltachat Sep 03 18:40:02 butterbox bash[1106]: Service madmail not found ^ I re-created your test, it looks like the madmail installer adds a service file, but it's not picked up by systemctl immediately (I guess it requires a daemon-reload) and the script that enables it never finds it after the first setup. So after a reboot, as soon as any setting requiring restart is changed, this gets set correctly: Sep 03 19:42:54 butterbox bash[697]: Now at setting: enable_deltachat Sep 03 19:42:55 butterbox bash[697]: Service madmail has been enabled. I will add running 'systemctl daemon-reload' to one of the scripts.

👍 1

nathan commented

2026-04-07 18:50:03 +00:00

Author

Owner

Fixed!

Also see docs here: https://guardianproject.dev/butter/churn/src/branch/main/docs/multibox.md

Fixed! Also see docs here: https://guardianproject.dev/butter/churn/src/branch/main/docs/multibox.md