Intended mail system setup?

I am coming from a background of setting up custom servers, and I am trying to install a new box using Virtualmin. The ease of administration appeals to me, and I hope to be able to hand over many day-to-day config tasks to other managers who wouldn’t be able to configure via the command line.

I am using Virtualmin GPL on Ubuntu 7.04, so I haven’t used the install.sh script.

I can deal with configuring things by hand, but I would love to know what the default intended setup is for the mail system in Virtualmin. I don’t need configuration instructions, I just need to know the basic flow.

I gather from searches it is Maildir in home directories, and I understand it is Postfix and Dovecot. How are deliveries handled? Via procmail? Directly from Postfix using home_mailbox = Maildir/? How does spamassassin tie in?

If someone can give me a plain-english description of the intended configuration, that would be very helpful.

Thanks!

Thanks for your reply, this is exactly what I was wondering.

If I were to install Debian 4.0 and use the install.sh script, would all of this be automatically configured, or does that script simply install the appropriate packages and leave the interconnecting up to the admin (when using the GPL verion, of course).

By the way, I agree saslauthd is a bear, but it isn’t necessary with relatively recent versions of dovecot and postfix, since postfix can use dovecot’s sasl implementation:

http://www.postfix.org/SASL_README.html#server_dovecot

Thanks!

The procmail line in those files seems strange:

mailbox_command = /usr/bin/procmail-wrapper -o -a $DOMAIN -d $LOGNAME

There is no procmail-wrapper on Ubuntu, but entering the following:

mailbox_command = /usr/bin/procmail -o -a $DOMAIN -d $LOGNAME

results in errors such as:

Oct 14 14:43:13 sqwubbsy procmail[15954]: Attempt to fake stamp by "neondays"

Removing the -o fixes this.

The Ubuntu (and presumably Debian) default is:

mailbox_command = procmail -a "$EXTENSION"

which works and produces no errors.

What does Virtualmin default to for Debian? The scripts appear to perhaps contain settings for Fedora.

Thanks!

procmail-wrapper is a package we provide. It’s a simple suexec wrapper that allows for per-domain and per-user spam and AV settings.

If I were to install Debian 4.0 and use the install.sh script, would all of this be automatically configured, or does that script simply install the appropriate packages and leave the interconnecting up to the admin (when using the GPL verion, of course).

Yes, everything should work out of the box, if you use the install.sh (there is one quirk that I’ll hopefully have fixed today, which requires a one-line change the the dovecot.conf to allow authentication against PAM).

And, yes, we’ll likely move to the Dovecot SASL server in a couple of months. But, I believe all of the known issues with Cyrus saslauthd have been resolved–it should work great on all of our supported systems.

procmail, yes. Though it doesn’t matter to Virtualmin GPL–it doesn’t manage the Spam/AV filtering the way Professional does. That said, if you think you might upgrade, sticking close to Professional defaults will make the upgrade easier.

But, yes, you have the gist of it:

Postfix, delivers to Procmail, delivers to ~/Maildir, retrieved with Dovecot.

Our procmail recipe looks like this:

LOGFILE=/var/log/procmail.log
TRAP=/etc/webmin/virtual-server/procmail-logger.pl
:0wi
VIRTUALMIN=|/etc/webmin/virtual-server/lookup-domain.pl $LOGNAME
:0

  • ?/usr/bin/test "$VIRTUALMIN" != ""
    {
    INCLUDERC=/etc/webmin/virtual-server/procmail/$VIRTUALMIN
    }
    DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/
    ORGMAIL=$HOME/Maildir/
    DROPPRIVS=yes

But the lookup-domain.pl test and the INCLUDERC line won’t work on a GPL system (I don’t think–we have plans to merge that code down to GPL eventually, but I don’t think it has happened yet). Anyway, you could add your own explicit calls to clamscan/clamdscan and spamassassin/spamc in place of the lookup-domain call.

Mostly it’s a pretty straight ahead configuration.

You’ll need hash:/etc/postfix/virtual setup, and getting saslauthd running can be a bear–there’s a thread here in the forums where I finally documented it in detail for Debian. You may also want to look at this script:

http://software.virtualmin.com/lib/mail-setup.pl

And, or, this one:

http://software.virtualmin.com/lib/virtualmin-base-standalone.pl

These might even run on Ubuntu 7.04 and do reasonable things. The first just sets up mail, while the second does all of our configuration steps (most of them, anyway…I haven’t updated the standalone script lately, so it’s missing a couple of things…I’ll try to update it tomorrow).<br><br>Post edited by: Joe, at: 2007/10/11 22:50

procmail, yes. Though it doesn’t matter to Virtualmin GPL–it doesn’t manage the Spam/AV filtering the way Professional does. That said, if you think you might upgrade, sticking close to Professional defaults will make the upgrade easier.

But, yes, you have the gist of it:

Postfix, delivers to Procmail, delivers to ~/Maildir, retrieved with Dovecot.

Our procmail recipe looks like this:

LOGFILE=/var/log/procmail.log
TRAP=/etc/webmin/virtual-server/procmail-logger.pl
:0wi
VIRTUALMIN=|/etc/webmin/virtual-server/lookup-domain.pl $LOGNAME
:0

  • ?/usr/bin/test "$VIRTUALMIN" != ""
    {
    INCLUDERC=/etc/webmin/virtual-server/procmail/$VIRTUALMIN
    }
    DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/
    ORGMAIL=$HOME/Maildir/
    DROPPRIVS=yes

But the lookup-domain.pl test and the INCLUDERC line won’t work on a GPL system (I don’t think–we have plans to merge that code down to GPL eventually, but I don’t think it has happened yet). Anyway, you could add your own explicit calls to clamscan/clamdscan and spamassassin/spamc in place of the lookup-domain call.

Mostly it’s a pretty straight ahead configuration.

You’ll need hash:/etc/postfix/virtual setup, and getting saslauthd running can be a bear–there’s a thread here in the forums where I finally documented it in detail for Debian. You may also want to look at this script:

http://software.virtualmin.com/lib/mail-setup.pl

And, or, this one:

http://software.virtualmin.com/lib/virtualmin-base-standalone.pl

These might even run on Ubuntu 7.04 and do reasonable things. The first just sets up mail, while the second does all of our configuration steps (most of them, anyway…I haven’t updated the standalone script lately, so it’s missing a couple of things…I’ll try to update it tomorrow).<br><br>Post edited by: Joe, at: 2007/10/11 22:50

procmail, yes. Though it doesn’t matter to Virtualmin GPL–it doesn’t manage the Spam/AV filtering the way Professional does. That said, if you think you might upgrade, sticking close to Professional defaults will make the upgrade easier.

But, yes, you have the gist of it:

Postfix, delivers to Procmail, delivers to ~/Maildir, retrieved with Dovecot.

Our procmail recipe looks like this:

LOGFILE=/var/log/procmail.log
TRAP=/etc/webmin/virtual-server/procmail-logger.pl
:0wi
VIRTUALMIN=|/etc/webmin/virtual-server/lookup-domain.pl $LOGNAME
:0

  • ?/usr/bin/test "$VIRTUALMIN" != ""
    {
    INCLUDERC=/etc/webmin/virtual-server/procmail/$VIRTUALMIN
    }
    DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/
    ORGMAIL=$HOME/Maildir/
    DROPPRIVS=yes

But the lookup-domain.pl test and the INCLUDERC line won’t work on a GPL system (I don’t think–we have plans to merge that code down to GPL eventually, but I don’t think it has happened yet). Anyway, you could add your own explicit calls to clamscan/clamdscan and spamassassin/spamc in place of the lookup-domain call.

Mostly it’s a pretty straight ahead configuration.

You’ll need hash:/etc/postfix/virtual setup, and getting saslauthd running can be a bear–there’s a thread here in the forums where I finally documented it in detail for Debian. You may also want to look at this script:

http://software.virtualmin.com/lib/mail-setup.pl

And, or, this one:

http://software.virtualmin.com/lib/virtualmin-base-standalone.pl

These might even run on Ubuntu 7.04 and do reasonable things. The first just sets up mail, while the second does all of our configuration steps (most of them, anyway…I haven’t updated the standalone script lately, so it’s missing a couple of things…I’ll try to update it tomorrow).<br><br>Post edited by: Joe, at: 2007/10/11 22:50