Port 465 is used for SMTP and this is supposedly deprecated for secure email. However, using TLS from the start of the communications seems far more secure than starting off with insecure communications and then trying to upgrade it with a command to begin TLS, as happens with STARTTLS. There are possible attacks against STARTTLS in which the command to begin secure communications is removed or overwritten which could then result in email being transferred in plain text over the internet and be readable by third parties.

If you didn't use existing GPG keys during the Freedombone installation then you'll need to add a password to your newly generated private key. This is highly recommended. Go through the following sequence of commands to ssh into the Freedombone and then change your GPG password.

ssh username@domainname -p 2222
gpg --edit-key username@domain
passwd
save
quit
exit

Having a password on your GPG key will prevent someone from reading your email even if your server gets lost or stolen or if someone else has physical access to it. Make the password something long and unlikely to be guessable or vulnerable to a brute force dictionary attack.

If you havn't already then you should publish your GPG public key so that others can find it.

ssh username@domainname -p 2222
gpg --send-keys username@domainname
exit

Mutt is a terminal based email client which comes already installed onto the Freedombone. To access it you'll need to access it via ssh with:

ssh username@domainname -p 2222

If you're using Windows there is an ssh client called putty, on Linux just open a terminal and enter the above command with your username and domain name. On Android you can use the ConnectBot app with the hostname username@domain:2222

Once you have logged in via ssh then just type mutt. Like most terminal programs mutt is quite easy once you've learned the main keys.

Some useful keys to know are:

To use the address book system open an email by pressing the enter key on it and then to add the sender to the address list press the A key. It will ask you for an alias which may be used the next time you want to send a mail. Alternatively you may just edit the ~/.mutt-alias file directly to add email addresses.

One of the most common things which you might wish to do is to send an email. To do this first press m to create a new message. Enter the address to send to and the subject, then after a few seconds the Emacs editor will appear with a blank document. Type your email then press CTRL-x CTRL-s to save it and CTRL-x CTRL-c to exit. You will then see a summary of the email to be sent out. Press y to send it and then enter your GPG key passphrase (the one you gave when creating a PGP/GPG key). The purpose of that is to add a signature which is a strong proof that the email was written by you and not by someone else.

When reading emails you will initially need to enter your GPG password. It will be retained in RAM for a while afterwards.

Another common way in which you may want to access email is via Thunderbird. This may be especially useful if you're trying to convert former Windows users who may previously have been using some version of Outlook.

The following instructions should be carried out on the client machines (laptop, etc), not on the BBB itself.

NOTE: Currently the K9 email client will not work with the Freedombone since it doesn't support PGP/MIME encoding. However, there is development work taking place on that feature and it is hoped that K9 may be usable in the near future.

To subscribe to a mailing list so that it appears within Mutt or Thunderbird.

ssh username@domainname -p 2222
addmailinglist <username> <mailinglistname> <subjecttag>
exit

The subject tag should be the word or phrase which appears within the brackets in the subject line of emails from the mailing list. The mailing list name should be something short so that it is readable within the left side column of the mutt email client.

Similar to adding mailing list folders you can also add specified email addresses into a folder.

ssh username@domainname -p 2222
addemailtofolder <username> <emailaddress> <mailinglistname>
exit

The mailing list name should be something short so that it is readable within the left side column of the mutt email client.

Within a browser go to your owncloud domain, then create an administrator account. The username and password can be anything, and ideally should be generated from a password manager.

You will also need to enter database details:

After creating an administrator account then create a user account via the Users dropdown menu entry on the right hand side and log the details in a password manager. Give the user a quota suitable for the size of your microSD card or other storage.

Log out from the administrator account and then log back in as the user you just created.

Within F-droid search for owncloud and install the client. Also install CalDAV Sync Adapter.

Open the owncloud app and enter your owncloud domain name (including the https prefix) and login details for the user you created.

Open the calendar app and under settings add a CalDav account with the url:

https://myownclouddomain/remote.php/caldav/principals/myowncloudusername

You will also be prompted to enter login details. Your Android and Owncloud calendars should now be synchronised.

Open your software center and search for "owncloud client". Enter your owncloud domain name (with the https prefix) and login details.

You can now drag files into the ~/owncloud directory and they will automatically sync to your server. It's that easy.

An easy way to play music on any mobile device in your home is to use the DLNA service. Copy your music into a directory called "Music" on a USB thumb drive and then insert it into from socket on the Beaglebone.

ssh into the system with:

ssh myusername@mydomain.com -p 2222

Then mount the USB drive with:

su
attach-music

The system will scan the Music directory, which could take a while if there are thousands of files, but you don't need to do anything further with the Beaglebone other than perhaps to log out by typing exit a couple of times.

If you have an Android device then go to F-Droid (if you don't already have it installed then it can be downloaded here) and search for ControlDLNA. On running the app you should see a red Debian icon which you can press on, then you may need to select "local". After a few seconds the list of albums or tracks should then appear and you can browse and play them.

The DLNA service will only work within your local home network, and isn't remotely accessible from other locations via the internet. That can be both a good and a bad thing. Another consideration is that there are no access controls on DLNA services, so any music or videos on the USB drive will be playable by anyone within your home network. If you need to restrict access to certain files then it may be better to use the music player within Owncloud.

The main advantage of playing music via Owncloud is that you can do that from anywhere - not only within your home network.

By default a music player is installed into Owncloud, so all you need to do is to visit your Owncloud web site, select the music directory and then upload some music files. Afterwards you can select the music icon from the top left drop down menu and albums will then appear which can be played. If you want to share music with other users then you can select the share option from within the files view to make the tracks available.

To set up your microblog go to:

https://yourmicroblogdomainname/install.php

and enter the following settings:

When the install is complete you will see a lot of warnings but just ignore those and navigate to your microblog domain and you can then complete the configuration via the Admin section on the header bar. Some recommended admin settings are:

You will need to have a non self-signed SSL certificate in order to use Red Matrix. Put the public certificate in /etc/ssl/certs/yourredmatrixdomainname.crt and the private certificate in /etc/ssl/private/yourredmatrixdomainname.key. If there is an intermediate certificate needed (such as with StartSSL) then this will need to be concatenated onto the end of the crt file, like this:

cat /etc/ssl/certs/yourredmatrixdomainname.crt /etc/ssl/chains/startssl-sub.class1.server.ca.pem >
 /etc/ssl/certs/yourredmatrixdomainname.bundle.crt

Then change ssl_certificate to /etc/ssl/certs/yourredmatrixdomainname.bundle.crt within /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourredmatrixdomainname

Visit the URL of your Red Matrix site and you should be taken through the rest of the installation procedure. Note that this may take a few minutes so don't be concerned if it looks as if it has crashed - just leave it running.

When installation is complete you can register a new user.

IRC is useful for multi-user chat. The classic use case is for software development where many engineers might need to coordinate their activities, but it's also useful for meetings, parties and general socialising.