Help Create A Chat Control Resistant Turnkey Chatmail/Deltachat Relay Stack - Rootless Podman Compose, OpenSUSE BCI, Hardened, & SELinux by 3nd5h1771fy

Description

The Mission: Decentralized & Sovereign Messaging

FYI: If you have never heard of "Chatmail", you can visit their site here, but simply put it can be thought of as the underlying protocol/platform decentralized messengers like DeltaChat use for their communications. Do not confuse it with the honeypot looking non-opensource paid for prodect with better seo that directs you to chatmailsecure(dot)com

In an era of increasing centralized surveillance by unaccountable bad actors (aka BigTech), "Chat Control," and the erosion of digital privacy, the need for sovereign communication infrastructure is critical. Chatmail is a pioneering initiative that bridges the gap between classic email and modern instant messaging, offering metadata-minimized, end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) communication that is interoperable and open.

However, unless you are a seasoned sysadmin, the current recommended deployment method of a Chatmail relay is rigid, fragile, difficult to properly secure, and effectively takes over the entire host the "relay" is deployed on.

Why This Matters

A simple, host agnostic, reproducible deployment lowers the entry cost for anyone wanting to run a privacy‑preserving, decentralized messaging relay. In an era of perpetually resurrected chat‑control legislation threats, EU digital‑sovereignty drives, and many dangers of using big‑tech messaging platforms (Apple iMessage, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Instagram, SMS, Google Messages, etc...) for any type of communication, providing an easy‑to‑use alternative empowers:

• Censorship resistance - No single entity controls the relay; operators can spin up new nodes quickly.
  
• Surveillance mitigation - End‑to‑end OpenPGP encryption ensures relay operators never see plaintext.
  
• Digital sovereignty - Communities can host their own infrastructure under local jurisdiction, aligning with national data‑policy goals.
  

By turning the Chatmail relay into a plug‑and‑play container stack, we enable broader adoption, foster a resilient messaging fabric, and give developers, activists, and hobbyists a concrete tool to defend privacy online.

Goals

As I indicated earlier, this project aims to drastically simplify the deployment of Chatmail relay. By converting this architecture into a portable, containerized stack using Podman and OpenSUSE base container images, we can allow anyone to deploy their own censorship-resistant, privacy-preserving communications node in minutes.

Our goal for Hack Week: package every component into containers built on openSUSE/MicroOS base images, initially orchestrated with a single container-compose.yml (podman-compose compatible). The stack will:

• Run on any host that supports Podman (including optimizations and enhancements for SELinux‑enabled systems).
  
• Allow network decoupling by refactoring configurations to move from file-system constrained Unix sockets to internal TCP networking, allowing containers achieve stricter isolation.
• Utilize Enhanced Security with SELinux by using purpose built utilities such as udica we can quickly generate custom SELinux policies for the container stack, ensuring strict confinement superior to standard/typical Docker deployments.
• Allow the use of bind or remote mounted volumes for shared data (/var/vmail, DKIM keys, TLS certs, etc.).
  
• Replace the local DNS server requirement with a remote DNS‑provider API for DKIM/TXT record publishing.
  

By delivering a turnkey, host agnostic, reproducible deployment, we lower the barrier for individuals and small communities to launch their own chatmail relays, fostering a decentralized, censorship‑resistant messaging ecosystem that can serve DeltaChat users and/or future services adopting this protocol

Resources

• The links included above
• https://chatmail.at/doc/relay/
• https://delta.chat/en/help
• Project repo -> https://codeberg.org/EndShittification/containerized-chatmail-relay

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OpenRC in openSUSE by jimedrand

Description

I have been using openSUSE for 3 years and I am just seen the systemd as init system. Actually, I want to make openSUSE with supports to another init such as OpenRC init that I'm always using it in another distros, and I was think, "what about if I'm including OpenRC init in openSUSE and give anyone as second way for them who don't want to use systemd?", and I'm curious about that. That's why I'm opening these.

Goals

Giving OpenRC support for Tumbleweed first, then going in Leap in future if possible.

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openSUSE on ZoL from OpenZFS project by jkohoutek

Idea is to have SUSE system with OpenZFS as root FS.

Why ZFS

Ways in which ZFS is better than BTRFS

Main goal

Have OpenZFS as install option in the installer and utilize zedenv Boot Environment Manager for SUSE updates install

Goals

• synergy of ZFS with dracut, so snapshots are correctly added to the grub
• synergy of zedenv with zypper
  • before every update snapshot is created
  • when new kernel or other package which requires reboot is about to be installed, the update will be processed to the new boot environment snapshot and grub configuration changed to boot to this new one
• integrate Root on ZFS as install option to the YaST
• configure Kiwi for the ZFS install images

Completed goals

• prepare ZFS pool compatible with openSUSE installation ✓
• install openSUSE with root on ZFS ✓
• boot to the prepared and installed system ✓

Current progress

Resources:

• OpenZFS
• zedenv Boot Environment Manager
• SUSE reposirtories with ZoL ZFS packages

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