Some good news here!  I was able to install the Linux citadel-client and able to use the .Admin command set.  Didn't fix any of the other issues but at least this aspect is basically working.

Nothing is being done with Internet mail.   Our Citadel install is all within Citadel itself.  The email addresses are being used as an isolated intranet setup.   The issue with contacts is the fact the data entered in the fields of the phone numbers is not saved after clicking save.  The fields stay blank which means WebCit is not interacting correctly with the database.  'And, I want to know how that can be fixed to work appropriately.   The same with the internal Citadel email with server fully qualified domain name.   The field stays blank no matter what is entered.

Dear Suporters,

Try to send to this email (it does not exists. It is distorted from a real one). Use all (name+email)

Albertí Quintá, Xavier <xalberti@indla.fr>

It will returned but see the Contacts folder. It appears 2 new contacts. One wrong and one good. But with the original email (not distorted) appear only the wrong one.

Let me please know if it is a bug or if it is only in my server.  

Thank you,

Luís Gonçalves.

It was sent with Thunderbird.

Mon Apr 20 2026 20:44:34 UTC from luisgo Subject: Possible bug.

Dear Suporters,

Try to send to this email (it does not exists. It is distorted from a real one). Use all (name+email)

Albertí Quintá, Xavier <xalberti@indla.fr>

It will returned but see the Contacts folder. It appears 2 new contacts. One wrong and one good. But with the original email (not distorted) appear only the wrong one.

Let me please know if it is a bug or if it is only in my server.  

Thank you,

Luís Gonçalves.

Hello fellow Citadel supporters

I hope you are well.

I have deployed Citadel using the docker container method. It seems all e-mails timestamps are offset by 2 hours ahead. I am wondering if there is a way and what the best method is to set a date/time or timezone for the Citadel server or per user.

I have checked the result of $date in the docker container (docker exec -it citadel /bin/bash) which is correct, and have also tried to change the timezone environment variable in the docker run command with -e TZ=GMT and -e TZ=Africa/Johannesburg, which does reflect the time change in the docker container bash date command, however this doesn't make a difference to the timestamp of emails sent/received, so I'm assuming I can set this somewhere on Citadel but am hoping for a nudge in the right direction as to where since I'm unable to find anything in the web interface logged in as admin or as the mailbox user. 

Thank you

Kind Regards

Andre

Dear All,

My settings:

Centos 9, 2 threads, 3GBytes Memory, 4GBytes Swap Memory, 15GBytes free Disk. Citadel with 2 email users.

As I said in a previous post my citadel data files does a rotation every 3-4 months. I have emails of only of the last 3 to 4 months. Every month I delete the older month. Usually after 3-4 months the citadel main data file reduces drastically in size after increasing for 3-4 months. Now I notice that citadel seems more stable (no core dumps). However I do not see the data file redution. By seeing the "Size on Disk" (with Properties) in Thunderbird I can see that I have 1.5 GBytes of emails but the main citadel data file have 4 GBytes.

I use a lot the ctdldump and ctdlload (offline commands) as I saw that improves the stability of Citadel. I use/do usually when I trash a lot of emails (in size).

Are there some way to shrink the size of the main citadel data file without compromizing the citadel stability?

Thank you,

Luís Gonçalves.

I have checked the result of $date in the docker container (docker exec -it citadel /bin/bash) which is correct, and have also tried to change the timezone environment variable in the docker run command with -e TZ=GMT and -e TZ=Africa/Johannesburg, which does reflect the time change in the docker container bash date command, however this doesn't make a difference to the timestamp of emails sent/received, so I'm assuming I can set this somewhere on Citadel but am hoping for a nudge in the right direction as to where since I'm unable to find anything in the web interface logged in as admin or as the mailbox user. 

Citadel clients (including WebCit) render the date and time based on the time zone the client is set to.  Since you're probably using WebCit Classic that's definitely the web server's time zone setting.

For sending out mail, the timezone of the host is relevant, the zone the host is set to before you run the Docker container.

Mon May 04 2026 11:08:02 PM UTC from IGnatius T Foobar Subject: Re: How to modify timezone for users/server to set correct time on emails

 

I stand corrected.  Look at that, it's showing the time in UTC right here on Uncensored, which is definitely running in US Eastern time zone.   Let me check the build and see what's up with that.

Thanks for the report.

Found it!

You have to map /etc/localtime in the container to /etc/localtime on the host.  You can do it with a command like this:

docker run \
   -d \
   -e TZ=America/New_York \
   -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro \
   --restart=unless-stopped \
   --network host \
   --volume=/usr/local/citadel:/citadel-data \
   --volume=/usr/local/webcit/.well-known:/usr/local/webcit/.well-known \
   --name=citadel \
   citadeldotorg/citadel

 The key is that "-v" command up there.  You were correct in setting "-e" to your timezone.  Add the "-v" and it ought to work.

Tested, right here, just now.

Are there some way to shrink the size of the main citadel data file without compromizing the citadel stability?

Do you have the auto-purger configured to delete "old" messages?

You can do this at the site-wide level, or on an individual room (such as your trash folder).

If new data is arriving at approximately the same rate old data is expiring, then yes, eventually you will reach an equilibrium where the database files stabilize in size.

Do look in the Aide room for messages confirming this.  The helpful Citadel Aide will tell you how many objects are being deleted during the nightly purger run.