Amahi Mail System

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Warning.png WARNING
This should only be attempted by advanced users.
It is still under development.


DISCLAIMER: This is for Amahi 7 on Fedora 19 ONLY! Although tested, use at your own risk. I cannot guarantee that it will work for your system or not cause any serious problems.

Purpose

The primary intent of the Amahi Mail System is to allow you to use your Home Digital Assistant (HDA) as a mail server.

  • 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, etc). 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, etc), 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.

Current Version

1.05 (Fedora 19) released January 1, 2014

Known Issues

  • During the configuration, the ClamAV definitions download sometimes takes too long. It can cause the setup to fail, depending on availability of their server.
    • The proposed work around is to run the CLamAV virus definition update after setup is complete.
    • Comment out line 164 (/usr/bin/freshclam -v) in mail-setup.sh script.
    • Run this separately after configuration is complete when you will see the notification You have 2 new messages.

Change Log

  • Upgraded to Amahi 7 on Fedora 19
  • Added 32-bit binaries
  • Changed web page background color
  • Remove quota info from web pages
  • Enable port 587 for sending mail
  • Removed mail quota from Postfix configuration
  • Fixed certificate errors when using spaces
  • Streamlined uninstall script for better cleanup
  • Added script to update mail certificate
  • Inserted additional logging messages

Future Enhancements

  • Expand instructions to include how to configure mail clients
  • Incorporate a mail backup mechanism
  • Streamline code and validate form fields
  • Move mailbox data files to share (See Tips below)

How to Install/Uninstall (Automated)

  • Special access must be requested to install Amahi Mail System.
  • Once granted, install/uninstall via the Applications tab in the Amahi Dashboard.

How to Install (Manual)

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. Open terminal as root user, and create a web app in Amahi named ams (Amahi application Web App provides this capability.).
  3. Navigate to /var/hda/web-apps/ams directory.
  4. Download mail-server-1.05.zip (sha1sum 4d5623d5d00a4d66512455deaec688fc49a34782) to this directory and extract it into html directory of ams (archive file list).
  5. Ensure you recursively change ownership of the files to apache:users.
  6. Need to make a directory called elevated in ams. Copy mail-setup.sh and del-maildir.sh to that location.
  7. Ensure mail-setup.sh and del-maildir.sh are executable.
  8. Create the database and insert the data from the mail.sql file located in the config directory.
  9. Navigate to http://ams in your favorite web browser and you should see the login page.
  10. Enter credentials (admin/amahi) and choose Login to display the install page (See Tips for how to change the login info).
  11. Complete all the required info. Once finished, select the click the NEXT button and the data will be added to the database.
  12. Next, a screen will appear with a INSTALL button, click it to begin. You will also notice a log link so you can monitor the install.
  13. Use your favorite mail client, Roundcube, AtMail, or SquirrelMail to access your new mail account.
  14. Use the built-in tool to manage Virtual User information in the database. DadaBIK, phpMyAdmin, or Adminer can also be utilized.
Example Install Terminal Session
su -
cd /var/hda/web-apps/ams
wget https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1380867/mail-server-1.05.zip
mkdir -p elevated
cd html
unzip ../mail-server-1.05.zip
chmod 755 *.sh
chown -R apache:users * ../elevated
cp mail-setup.sh ../elevated
cp del-maildir.sh ../elevated
hda-create-db-and-user mail
mysql -umail -pmail mail < config/mail.sql

How to Uninstall (Manual)

To uninstall, do the following:

  1. Open terminal as root user, and navigate to /var/hda/web-apps/ams/html directory.
  2. Remove the database.
  3. Ensure mail-remove.sh is executable.
  4. From the html directory, run the script. This may take a while to complete.
  5. Remove the web app in Amahi named ams (Amahi application Web App provides this capability.) and close the terminal window.
Example Uninstall Terminal Session
su -
cd /var/hda/web-apps/ams/html
hda-create-db-and-user -d mail
./mail-remove.sh


Add-Ons

Mailman
You can now add the Mailman software to your Amahi Mail System. Follow the instructions at Amahi Mailman.

FetchYahoo Add capability to fetch Yahoo mail:

  • Download the latest FetchYahoo
  • Install instructions included

Tips

  • To permanently change your hostname from localhost.localdomain, see this article.
  • You can change the Login Credentials for the integrated database manager/web-based installer by doing the following:
    • Open the Login-class.php file in the /var/hda/web-apps/ams/html directory
    • On lines 29 and 32, change to whatever works for you
    • Save and now you can log in using the new credentials
  • Change the sender default email address format (i.e. root@hda.amahi.net) by following Masquerade email address tutorial.
  • Update mail certificate
    • Should you need to update the mail certificates, use the mail-cert-update.sh script.
    • Prior to executing the script, you will want to update the values for Country, State, City, Organization, Organizational Unit, and Number of Days for the certificate to be valid.
    • Once complete, you can execute the script to update the mail server certificates.
su -
cd /var/hda/web-apps/ams/html
./mail-cert-update.sh
  • Move mailbox data files to share
    • MUST be accomplished prior to doing the install (Step #12).
    • Will ensure if you uninstall, mailbox data files will be preserved.
    • Create a new share named ams in Amahi dashboard Shares tab.
    • Open terminal as root user and execute the following commands:
cd /var/hda/web-apps/ams
sed -i '57s|/home/vmail|/var/hda/files/ams|' html/mail-setup.sh;
sed -i '65s|/home/vmail|/var/hda/files/ams|' html/mail-setup.sh;
sed -i '74s|/home/vmail|/var/hda/files/ams|' html/users.php;
sed -i '12s|/home/vmail|/var/hda/files/ams|' html/config/authmysqlrc;

Troubleshooting

  • Should your mail server hang up and stop working, you can most likely fix it with the mail-stop.sh and mail-start.sh scripts included in the app. Open terminal as root user and do the following:
cd /var/hda/web-apps/ams/html
./mail-stop.sh
./mail-start.sh
  • If you get the message " warning: SASL authentication failure: No worthy mechs found." open a terminal as root and execute the following:
yum install cyrus-sasl{,-plain}
Restart Postfix
systemctl restart postfix

Conclusion

You should now be able to log in to your account. There will be 2 messages, one is a welcome and the other is a SPAM test. Direct any questions or comments to the forums.


NOTE: These scripts were adapted from the Virtual Users And Domains With Postfix, Courier, MySQL And SquirrelMail (Fedora 18 x86_64) tutorial written by Falko Timme.