Amahi Mail System

DISCLAIMER: Although this has been tested, use at your own risk. I cannot guarantee that it will work for your system or not cause any serious problems.

Current Version

1.5 as of 3 Oct 09

Version Changes

• Added option for secure(https) or unsecure(http) webmail access.

The primary intent of the Amahi Mail System is to allow you to pull all ISP email into your server. Keep in mind this is still under development.

• It allows you to send/receive mail from your HDA. There are some quirks depending on if you have a registered domain with a paid service provider (i.e. GoDaddy, Host Gator). With these services, there is typically what is called a MX record associated with the domain name. This will allow you to send/receive mail as your hostname (i.e. myhda@home.com).

• If you use the free ones (i.e. user.yourhda.com, no-ip.org), you will have to masquerade your email address as your ISP (i.e. myhda@yourisp.com). This will ensure you can receive email replies from those you send from your HDA.

Pre-Configuration

• To permanently change your hostname from localhost.localdomain, see this article.

• Since the Postfix RPM was built custom, it needs to be excluded from updates. Failure to do so could break your Amahi Mail System after updates. Make the following change to /etc/yum.conf:

exclude=postfix*

Script download links:

32-bit: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1380867/32bit-virtual-mail-1.5.tar.gz
64-bit: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1380867/64bit-virtual-mail-1.4.tar.gz

Here's the sequence of events to get the virtual email server up and running:

1. Restart your HDA so it's fresh for the install. This is not required, just a recommendation.
2. Create a web app in Amahi named webmail.
3. Open a terminal window, become root, and navigate to /var/hda/web-apps/webmail directory.
4. Download script file (pick the correct one for your system) to this directory and extract it into html directory of webmail.
5. From the html directory, run the host-update-virtual-mail-1.4.sh script. This will check your hostname. If it is not correct, you will be given an opportunity to change it.
6. Answer all the questions. The answers will further customize your install. Note: Mail user name and password must be one word only (i.e. mailuser or mail_user are acceptable)
7. Once it completes, run the install-virtual-mail-1.4.sh script. The dependencies will be installed first. Depending on your system, 66 is the typical amount for install.
8. Watch the script for errors. This may help narrow down the problem if you cannot log in.
9. Once the script is complete, note the user name and password.
10. Navigate to http://webmail and enter your login credentials.
11. To uninstall, run the uninstall-virtual-mail-1.4.sh script.

You should now be able to log in to your account via webmail. There will be 2 messages, one is a welcome and the other is a SPAM test to show it's working. I forgot to mention that you can access the mail server from any email client as well within your network. Unfortunately, there is currently no front-end for administering accounts, so you will have to modify the database via phpMyAdmin or Adminer.

NOTE: These scripts were adapted from a tutorial authored by Falko Timme at http://howtoforge.net/virtual-users-domains-postfix-courier-mysql-squirrelmail-fedora-10.