Qmail Howto
11) Installing and configuring VMailMgr
To install VMailMgr, we need to run configure and make just like we do on any other source distributions:
cd /usr/local/src tar zxf vmailmgr-0.97.tar.gz cd vmailmgr-0.97 ./configure make make install cd .. tar zxf vmailmgr-tools-0.2.tar.gz cd vmailmgr-tools-0.2 make ./installer
If you receive an error for vmailmgr-tools compilation, edit vcheckquota.c, go to line 36 and simply put the sentence "Warning: the soft...blah blah" in one line. Type make again and the problem should go away. Let's configure VMailMgr to work with our domain.
groupadd email mkdir /home/email chmod 755 /home/email
Apart from the main installation, we'll have to configure VMailMgr as well. This step is required for controlling user quotas, auto-responder and some
other things.
mkdir /etc/vmailmgr chmod 755 /etc/vmailmgr cd /etc/vmailmgr ln -s /etc/vmailmgr /usr/local/etc/vmailmgr echo ./Maildir/ > default-maildir echo maildir > maildir-arg-str echo passwd > password-file echo /tmp/.vmailmgrd > socket-file echo users > user-dir
Create a file called vdeliver-predeliver (vi vdeliver-predeliver), then copy-paste the following:
#!/bin/sh /usr/local/bin/vcheckquota
Then, change permissions of the files in the folder:
chmod 755 /etc/vmailmgr/*
The directory /etc/vmailmgr is created for vmailmgr configuration files. The echo commands given above control the way vmailmgr will be handling directories and mail processing. Basically, we are telling vmailmgr that the password file for keeping users' passwords will be "passwd" and the directory that will contain individual user accounts will be "users". The "vdeliver-predeliver" lines will launch "vcheckquota", which will check a user's quota limits before delivering a message. You can change the above settings to fit your needs, but I would recommend using the default settings provided in this guide.
Now we need to create a set of scripts that should help us out a lot in adding and removing virtual domains. Download the file add_virt from this server and place it in /usr/local/bin.
The script is pretty simple. The first line sets a variable DGID (group ID) to "email", which is used while executing useradd to add a virtual domain to the system. The second line sets DHOME to "/home/email", which will be the base directory for all virtual domains you'll be creating in the future. QHOME is the directory where qmail is installed. The next four lines check if the user is root (remember, only root account will be able to execute this script). If nothing is given in command line, the script will print "Usage: add_virt newdomain.com", for those who don't know or forgot the script usage. Next, the script checks if the virtual domain already exists, by going through the system /etc/passwd file. Don't worry, the scipt will not screw up or damage your passwd file. Vmailmgr uses *nix authentication to verify virtual domains. However, it does not necessarily mean that you are leaving security holes. After creating the first test user, I will show you how to disable shell access to all created virtual domains for security purposes. When all the checks are completed successfully, the script will attempt to create the virtual domain you specified in command line. It will first launch useradd and add the domain. Then, it will prompt you to change the password for the created virtual domain. Next, the script will add the domain to /var/qmail/control/virtualdomains and /var/qmail/control/rcpthosts. The next line executes vsetup, which takes care of setting up a virtual domain for its first use. And finally, the last three commands will restart qmail, so that the new settings take effect. If everything went without a glitch, the script will print out "All done! Domain newdomain.com created."
Now, get the second file remove_virt and also place it in /usr/local/bin.
This script does the reverse of add_virt - i.e. it will remove the specified virtual domain from the system. Again, QHOME is where your qmail is installed. Another check for root user is run to prevent regular users from attempting to execute this script. If nothing is specified in command line, the script prints "Usage: remove_virt domain.com". Next, a quick check that tests the existence of the virtual domain in /etc/passwd is run. If the domain is found, the root account will be asked to confirm the deletion of the specified domain and all of its users. If "y" is received, the account is deleted from the system via userdel. If nothing or "n" is received, the script exits with "Aborted." message. Once userdel removes the system account, the script changes directory to /var/qmail/control and removes the deleted virtual domain from "virtualdomains" and "rcpthosts" files (the grep and mv lines). The last three commands restart qmail, for changes to take effect. If everything went smoothly, the script prints out "All done! Domain deleteddomain.com deleted."
Good, now we need to chmod those scripts, so that they are be executable. Plus, let's test those scripts by creating a virtual domain (yourserver.com):
chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/add_virt chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/remove_virt add_virt yourserver.com
It will output something like this:
Base Username [yourserver_com]: Creating new domain 'yourdomain.com'. Domain base user created in /home/email/yourdomain.com. Please provide domain password for VmailMgr. Changing password for user yourdomain_com. New password: Retype new password: passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully. Adding domain to control/virtualdomains...done Adding records to control/rcpthosts...done Setting up the domain dir for vmailmgr... vsetup: created users directory. vsetup: wrote '.qmail-default' file. vsetup: added alias 'mailer-daemon' vsetup: added alias 'postmaster' vsetup: added alias 'root' ...done Restarting Qmail... All done! Domain yourdomain.com created.
After your type add_virt yourserver.com you'll be asked for a password. Type the domain password and remember it - we'll need it for domain administration later on. The script output will be similar to what you see above. If you get an error saying bash: /root/.bashrc: Permission denied in the middle of the script, just ignore it.
Let's now create a test user at our domain. This user will be created solely for testing purposes. We'll delete it after we are sure that everything is working properly.
su - yourserver_com vadduser test
The account is created successfully. Remember or write down the password you specified - we'll need the password later for testing our mail server. Once you are done adding the user, type "exit" to return to superuser shell.
Now we need to disable the created virtual domains' shell access for security purposes. Launch your favorite editor and open /etc/passwd. Find the line with your created virtual domain. It will look something like this: yourserver_com:x:5007:5002::/home/email/yourserver.com:/bin/bash. Replace "/bin/bash" with either "/sbin/nologin" or "/bin/false". This makes sure that even if someone steals your domain password, he/she will not be able to use the shell.
Related posts:
10/31/2007 - 10:10
I have a problem with autoresponse. When it send’s the response, the sender address goes like this “”@domain.com . This way, it’s always flaged as relay, on my relay server.
Do you have any hint?
11/14/2007 - 02:40
Hi,
Really good site. Thanks for your valuable help. Do you have anything similar for postfix,mysql,dovecoat with webmail option. Since all these can be installed along with the O.S. and only need to integrate.
Rgds,
Saji Alexander.
11/28/2007 - 18:32
if you’re having problems making Courier for Fedora/Redhat with error /usr/include/stdio.h:385: error: syntax error before ‘&&’ token , you can find information here http://atmail.com/view_article.php?num=199
02/19/2010 - 02:45
That article no longer exists.
It has been replaced by: http://atmail.com/kb/?p=270
Just in case it disappears again, here it is:
———————-
Description: The standard Courier-IMAP 3.0.8 distribution will not build on stock Fedora/Redhat systems. Compilation fails while building the authlib library, usually with an error message like:
In file included from authstaticlistsearch.c:9:
/usr/include/stdio.h:385: error: syntax error before ‘&&’ token
A review of the stdio.h file shows that no ‘&&’ symbols appears on or near line 385.
Solution: The courier-imap/authlib directory contains a file named ‘debug.h’ to support the debugging of authentication attempts against the Courier IMAP server. This file contains a C preprocessor macro named ‘dprintf’ that conflicts with the ‘dprintf’ function defined in glibc’s ’stdio.h’. This conflict isn’t a problem so long as ‘#include ‘ appears before ‘#include “debug.h”‘ in the authlib source files. Unfortunately, this is not the case for files ‘authstaticlistsearch.c’, ‘authmoduser3.c’, ‘mod.h’, ‘authtest.c’, ‘debug.c’, and ‘authdaemon.c’.
To fix this problem, open these files in a text editor and move the ‘#include “debug.h”‘ line so that it is the last include directive. Make sure that you do not paste it into a ‘#if … #endif’ block. Once you have made these changes, the build process should succeed.
01/20/2008 - 15:07
I installed Your Qmail-modification a couple of years ago. Thanks for that! Now I would like to use your patch for bounce handling.
patch
03/04/2008 - 02:46
Hi,
how can we know a email is bounced or not ?? qmail handles smtp return codes ??
Thanks,
Satish.K
03/25/2008 - 03:46
/usr/local/bin/setuidgid qmaill “contrib/test_installation.sh -doit”
i stuck at that line and my fedora 8 give me :
/usr/local/bin/setuidgid qmaill “contrib/test_installation.sh -doit”
setuidgid: fatal: unable to run contrib/test_installation.sh -doit: file does not exist
AND also when i run : # /usr/local/bin/setuidgid qmaill \
“/var/qmail/bin/qmail-scanner-queue.pl” -g
perlscanner: generate new DB file
perlscanner: total of 9 entries.
my fedora 8 only reply : perlscanner: generate new DB file
**Please help me, it’s already 2 to 3 days since i tried to solve it but can’t…
04/30/2008 - 17:53
Hi Nasim. Thanks a lot for providing nice and very helpful instructions in plain english :-)
I’ve installed mail production server on Debian(4) using your guidlines.
Although I came across some problems after install, i.e. when I have created second virtual domain, mail server stopped recieving any messages at all(even though the first virtual domain was working on it’s own before). Is it something to do with Qmail-Scanner, where by one required to enter domains’ names before installing it(–local-domains “domain.one.com,domain.two.com”; page 5 of your instractions)?
Thanks a lot in advance if you can spare some time to answer this question.
Kind regards,
yuriy
05/01/2008 - 10:31
Yuriy, are you still receiving mail for the first domain that you had created before? Also, a little troubleshooting would definitely help. Try this:
1) Telnet to your server’s IP address port 25 by typing “telnet x.x.x.x 25″
2) Type “HELO test.com” or some other domain and press enter
3) Type “MAIL FROM:test@test.com” and press enter
4) Type “RCPT TO:test@yourdomain.com” and press enter
5) Type “DATA” and press enter
6) Type some garbage and then type “.” on a separate line. The server should respond “250 ok xxxxxxx qp xxxxx”.
7) Type “quit” on a separate line and see what output you get.
8) While doing all of the above check your qmail logs. Both the incoming tcp logs and your qmail logs.
9) After you are done with the telnet session, your logs should report what the problem is.
If your domain is not in one of the configuration files, you will get a descriptive error in the log. If there is any other problem, you should see it in the log as well.
If you can’t telnet to your server, then your tcpserver is having a problem and might need to be rebooted.
Hope the above helps.
Nasim
05/06/2008 - 07:36
i’m sorry..could you give me a module to make QMAIL in SLACKWARE 12, i have try to make it, but not suxess..please. for my homework
05/06/2008 - 11:11
Hi Nazim.
I can telnet to my server and do all steps you have listed alright. It’s just when I’m trying to set additional virtual domain it stops receiving emails(one can still send emails though) even to the first virtual domain. When I remove the second virtual domain it will start to receive emails but only after couple hours.I reckon that it’s Qmail-Scanner coursing this problem. I probably leave this issue to sort later on(I’m planning to install another test server but will keep in mind using more than one domain then).
I have couple more issues which require immediate attention and I was trying to sort them out but no luck so far.
1. I need to set our email server to give a 550 error for an invalid address. I have used Andrew Richards’ qmail-verify patch(http://free.acrconsulting.co.uk/email/qmail-verify.html). I can see qmail-verify daemon is running on our server but it’s not rejecting non-existing users(so it’s accepting anything with our domain). The problem could be that /home/email/[virtual_domain]/.qmail-default telling that anything coming with this domain is valid.
But because I’m using virtual domain .qmail-default pipes to /usr/local/bin/vdeliver.So vdeliver is deciding who is right users on our server. Andrew suggested to remove /home/email/[virtual_domain]/.qmail-default but when I did it email server stopped to receive emials. Do you know what parameters I need to pass to /usr/local/bin/vdeliver in /home/email/[virtual_domain]/.qmail-default so qmail-verify can properly filter email users?
2. Due to the increase in the number of ISP’s blocking port 25 for third party mailservers I need to set on mail server additional port to answer SMTP request. I was looking on google and found the following link http://www.skorpionweb.org/archives/2005/09/running_qmail_s.php.
So I followed the logic in this article and set separate tcpserver which listens to different port:
1) Created /var/qmail/rc2 :
#!/bin/sh
PATH=”/var/qmail/bin:/usr/local/bin”
export PATH
cd /
qmail-start ./Maildir | setuidgid qmaill \
multilog t n50 s1000000 \
/var/qmail/logs/qmail2 &
2) Created /usr/local/bin/runmail2:
exec softlimit -m 10000000 \
envdir /etc/relay-ctrl relay-ctrl-chdir \
tcpserver -v -H -R -l $HOSTNAME -x /etc/tcp.smtp.cdb -c200 -u5002 -g5000 0 587 qmail-smtpd 2>&1 &
3) Created /var/qmail/logs/qmail2 and chown it to qmaill:nofiles.
Now I can start separate tcpserver with port 587 and everything looks healthy with but when I change port 25 to 587 and try to send mail I have got an error “…The server may be unavailable or refusing connection…”
I wonder whether I need to set another instance of qmail-smtpd(may be qmail-smtpd2, just guessing here).
Thanks a lot again for your time and effort to keep this site going & helping folks like myself :-)
Kind regards, yuriy
05/24/2008 - 23:59
Hi Nazim,
Problem with setting second virtual domain was sorted out. It turned out that one needs to restart qmail server after adding another virtual domain.
Also I have sorted an issue with 550 error page(I have wrote about it in one of my previous posts).
With virtual domain .qmail-default file should exist for each user. So solution was pretty simple: copy original .qmail-default to .qmail-USERNAME in /home/email/yourdomain/ folder. Also my /etc/tcp.smtp looks like this:
127.:allow,RELAYCLIENT=”",RBLSMTPD=”",QMAILQUEUE=”/var/qmail/bin/qmail-queue”
:allow,QMAILQUEUE=”/var/qmail/bin/qmail-scanner-queue.pl”,VERIFY=”"
05/25/2008 - 02:29
Hi Nazim,
Sometimes I have an error when sending email(addresses which I used before or new):
An error occurred while sending mail.The mail server responded: sorry, that domain isn’t in my list of allowed rcpthosts(#5.7.1). Please check the message recipients and try again.
I thought that it something to do with timing out authentication so I have removed 900 from /etc/relay-ctrl/expiry(step 12->Installing Relay-CTRL; pagehttp://mansurovs.com/2002/12/20/qmail-howto/4) but I’m still getting this error.
I’ll appreciate if you could advice on what could be wrong, please.
Thanks a lot in advance,
yuriy
05/30/2008 - 10:10
Hi Nasim:
Have you tried to use CourierIMAP 4.3.1 (with AuthLib)?
I would appreciate your comments about it.
Thanks.
06/20/2008 - 19:22
This was helpful. Thank you.
06/29/2008 - 14:03
Nice tutorial. If anyone needs help, you can contact my via email on my website.
I could do it for free.
09/05/2008 - 16:04
> – Qmail Patches from http://mansurovs.com
Where is the patches, i find but…
10/03/2008 - 07:19
So what if I want a more minimalistic solution. Basically I have a mail server that only needs to serve one site, and primarily outgoing mail. So no fancy stuff needed like multiple users and auto-responders.
I would like to have a suite of admin tools, for instance, being able to manually send an email that’s been stuck in the queue and watching the remote mail server response, ideally have a php script parse this information.
Hours on Google have really only given me scripts for the end-user, none for really managing the admin part of qmail.
10/16/2008 - 23:09
Nice tutorial. This is only the patch that I haven’t encountered a problem.
I hope you can add a patch such as validrcptto. This is nice patch. However, I’m getting a hunk failed when I’m trying to patch it after patching all the patch on your tutorial. Probably, some code doesn’t conform to validrcptto patch. I’m not a C programmer so I’m getting a hard time fixing the problem. Please inform me via my email ntserafica@yahoo.com if you have the patch.
This could be a great gift this coming christmas :)
03/27/2009 - 22:20
can you have an instruction on how to get squirrelmail work together with your tutorial..
Thank in advanced
03/28/2009 - 01:50
I followed you through step 17.1 everything work fine but when I telnet to port 15 and 110 …these errors occur
===============================================
telnet 127.0.0.1 25
Trying 127.0.0.1…
Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1).
Escape character is ‘^]’.
220 tnway.com ESMTP
exit
502 unimplemented (#5.5.1)
quit
======================================================
telnet 127.0.0.1 110
Trying 127.0.0.1…
Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1).
Escape character is ‘^]’.
+OK
hello
-ERR authorization first
exit
-ERR authorization first
=============================================
What wrong with me ? I really need your help
Thank in advanced
03/28/2009 - 01:56
billyduc,
Just install Courier IMAP and you will be able to use Squirrelmail or any other web-based mail system. I personally use Horde http://www.horde.org/ and love the functionality.
Regarding your other issues with telnetting – the output seems to be normal and the services are responding. Did you try to send an email to your server through an external provider like gmail/yahoo? Did you try to use a client like Outlook to download emails through POP3/IMAP?
Nasim
03/30/2009 - 01:50
I use Evolution for email client.
I setup for “test” account to send and receive mail
When I clicked Send / Receive Button. It prompt me
Unable to connect to POP server myhost.mydomain.com.
Error Sending password : -ERR authorization failed
Please enter the POP password for test on host myhost.mydomain.com
I enter the password for test account……But the error window is open
Error While Fetching Mail
Unable to connect to POP server myhost.mydomain.com.
Error Sending password : Operation now in progress
05/05/2009 - 13:21
hey, i wrote a practical step-by-step how-to on qmail… please see the link: “http://119.15.153.9/qmail/qmail-install.html” , i hope some one will require it.
07/17/2009 - 11:06
Great howto, tnx!
08/19/2009 - 15:37
When I was trying to compile the qmail-autoresponder-0.97, it gave me the following error messages:
main.c: In function âexec_qmail_injectâ:
main.c:257: warning: missing sentinel in function call
./compile options.c
options.c:1:25: error: mysql/mysql.h: No such file or directory
make: *** [options.o] Error 1
I have the mysql installed. Please help.
Thank you
11/14/2009 - 15:09
I did “apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev” and it solved the problem with options.c:1:25: error: mysql/mysql.h: No such file or directory
11/14/2009 - 15:13
Andreas, thank you for the input!
Whenever there is a problem with mysql.h not being found, you need to install the mysql client source files, just like you did.
01/02/2010 - 07:39
Hello,
I like to forward all bounced emails for all of my user accounts to a single account.
is there a qmail setting or patch that allows me to forwards all bounced emails of my user accounts to a single admin account?
Regards